Columnist T.J. Simers goes to the doghouse

Maureen Gamble of Wichita wrote, "I appreciate when the news media give me the facts and even a little 'color' about an event. I do expect, however, that the writer has taken the time to do some background research on the topic and reports fairly on the events. This leads me to my questions. Why would you assign a writer that clearly knows nothing about dogs in general or dog shows specifically to write 1,000 words about the most prestigious dog event in this country? Assigning a person who apparently doesn't even care about dogs is like asking a principled Vegan to cover a bullfight!"

Gamble is writing about recent pieces by Sports columnist T.J. Simers. Her e-mail continued: "There must have been some reason the writer was sent to cover the event. Did the scheduled reporter become ill and couldn't travel? You couldn't find a stringer in the NYC area that actually might approach the assignment in a professional manner? I mean, what were you thinking?"

There was the Wednesday column that referred to "four ugly critters chosen Monday night to be included in Best in Show." There was the Tuesday column that called one contender "a nasty little grunt known as a Brussels griffon." Finally, no doubt to the relief of many Times-reading dog lovers, Thursday was the last day Simers was at the show, as a video attests.

E-mail complaints about treatment of the dog show have come in by the dozens, spurred in part by suggestions on various websites to write to The Times.

The truth is, the L.A. Times doesn't usually send a staffer to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. That it got staff coverage at all this year is because the Sports columnist chose to take his show on the road and landed in New York City.

When should crime victims' names be published?

"R&B star Rihanna is cooperating with investigators building a domestic violence case against her boyfriend, the singer Chris Brown, a police source said Monday," is the opening line in a news story published Tuesday, but it was a story a day earlier that brought questions and, in a few cases, condemnation of The Times.

The issue: Whether The Times should have published Rihanna's name as the accuser in that first-day news story.

As a post on this journal a year ago noted, the consideration on whether to withhold names is usually reserved for cases involving allegations of rape. (From the L.A. Times stylebook: "The Times does not name rape victims in most cases. Any exception to this standard, for whatever reason, must be approved by the editor, the managing editor, the associate editor or the senior editor.")

But the story unfolding over the weekend involved accusations of domestic violence.

Danny Shea, media editor at HuffingtonPost, wrote on his blog, "The Los Angeles Times decided to run Rihanna's name — despite the LAPD's refusal to confirm her identity, citing state laws meant to protect abuse victims' privacy."

A few others who sent e-mails thought that news organizations have a rule to omit victims' names in certain crime stories. Reader Adrienne Archer thought identifying Rihanna was "sleazy": "If Mr. Brown did these things he should be punished but if his girlfriend was his victim (which the LAPD did not confirm) she should not be. But you have done just that."

Kay Hagan of Santa Fe wrote, "You could not have known for certain that Chris Brown's assault victim had not been sexually violated as well as beaten up, since the police were withholding her name."

To the several individuals who have written, California Editor David Lauter has responded with the following note.

The Times' inaugural coverage: Where's the color? Why that headline?

Though The Times' Jan. 21 coverage of the inauguration brought sold-out newsstands and multiple press runs, it also spurred some quibbles and questions, with multiple comments made along three lines: lack of color in Wednesday's special section; allegations of a missing president in a montage on Sunday's special section; and criticisms of the Jan. 21 headline.

• Some readers complained there were too few full-color photographs in Wednesday's extra main section. Wrote Anne M. Brown of Fullerton: "Except for the color photograph on the front page and the crowd shot on the special section, there were no color photographs presenting the first couple during the inauguration or the attire worn by the first couple for the inauguration balls. Nothing to capture the event in the bold, striking way that color would have. You show the Hollywood stars in all their radiance when attending award shows, but this historic event is relegated to black and white."

As Brown pointed out, Page A1 featured a huge (full color) photo of the president being sworn in, but Pages A19 to A46, a separate section labeled "The Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama," included only seven news pages with color. Blame it on the capacity of the presses: Printing a page in color requires that it be processed four times, which limits the number of such pages for a day's edition. Editors and the advertising department juggle which pages will get color.  (Those photos and more were online and in color.)

• Of the main headline on Jan. 21, "Obama Calls for Hope in Face of Cold Reality," with the deck headline reading, "A tearful yet jubilant crowd hangs on the president's words as they echo across the National Mall," Christopher and Barbara Haire wrote that they were disappointed: "The L.A. Times missed the mark with their sober headline for their offering about the inauguration of an American president. People wanted a headline to celebrate with, and one they could pass down to their children and grandchildren; one that cried out about this mark in history, this momentous event. It did nothing for us. Sorry!"

Executive Editor John Arthur oversees the front page; senior copy chief Tim Lynch wrote the headline. They knew the fact that this was America's first inauguration of an African American president meant  the page would be a historical keepsake. But they wanted to balance the unprecedented nature of the event with the breaking news too -- what the new president said. How they did that, and what other newspapers showed on their fronts, follows the jump. 

Looking for the worst in job losses

"Job losses highest since 1945," was the headline on Saturday's lead story, which started out by saying that jobs were "disappearing in numbers not seen since the end of World War II." A few sentences later, the story reported, "The nation's unemployment rate rose to an eye-popping 7.2% in December and brought the total jobs lost for the year to the largest number since 1945, the Labor Department said."

The monthly jobs report from the Labor Department often earns a place on the front page of the L.A. Times, but in this case, reader William Girvetz of Ojai questioned the comparisons: "Without denying that there appear to be disturbing upheavals taking place and that loss of jobs, particularly recently, is one symptom, I do not find any support in your article for concluding that the situation is comparable to that which existed in 1945 at the end of World War II.... Although there may be a lot to be concerned about, I see [your analysis] along with the headline as somewhat more dramatic than is called for."

The Washington Post and the New York Times each played the story on their Business fronts. The Post headline was, "Jobless Rate Jumps to 7.2%; Firms Cut Jobs as Well as Hours." The (other) Times said, "Broad job losses as companies face sharp downturn." Neither painted the picture as bright -- the Post story quoted someone as saying the economy is in a free-fall and the New York Times said "economists fell over themselves in describing the dire nature of the jobs report."

But was the comparison to 1945 the most accurate way to portray today's situation?

Obama's race (or races)

David Krolik of Orange sent a note seeking correction. Other readers have been bothered as well by what the Los Angeles Times, and other news organizations, call President-elect Barack Obama. Krolik wrote: "You, along with EVERY OTHER media outlet have branded him, 'The first African American president.'  You are VERY WRONG. From what I understand, Obama's black father wasn't around very much, and his mother was white. Isn't it true that our president elect was raised by his WHITE grandmother?  If so, why aren't you reporting that he is the first MIXED RACE president?"

For Times editors, the answer is simple: Times news stories call Obama what the president-elect calls himself. And, as a Nov. 28 article in The Times put it, "Obama, 47, has historically described himself as 'black' or 'African American.' "

Clark Stevens, who oversees style and usage, felt the question had been settled some time ago. "We generally refer to people as they perceive and present themselves, especially if that's the way they're perceived and presented in the world at large. From the beginning, Obama's background has been thoroughly described and discussed by him, by us and by many other media outlets."

Rose Parade: Big crowd, but who's counting?*

Peter Apanel of Portland, Ore., was counting noses, not smelling the roses, when he read the day-after story on the Rose Parade. His e-mail said: "The Times reported that an estimated 700,000 people attended this year's Rose Parade. That figure is obviously false, so I'm wondering why The Times continues to report false attendance figures year after year."

Apanel's comments led California Editor David Lauter to send his own message to the staff (see below) about the problems in providing crowd counts and offering some guidelines for avoiding the sort of errors Apanel had noted.

Here's the passage from the Jan. 2 story that drew Apanel's attention: "More than 700,000 people lined the parade route, a fire official said, the biggest crowd count in three years -- thanks in part to the warmer weather, which climbed into the 70s. It was the kind of bright, clear day that parade boosters have long used as a floral-scented advertisement for sunny Southern California."

Readers so often raise questions about crowd estimates in stories that there's an entry in the "frequently asked questions" part of this journal.

As for the Rose Parade, as a Times story in 2003 reported, "it's almost impossible to come up with accurate estimates of the crowds that pack the route each year. Tournament officials long claimed that 1 million people attended the parade -- a number that researchers at Caltech have said is statistically impossible. Last year, the Tournament estimated parade attendance at 800,000, attributing the lower turnout in part to fears brought on by the 9/11 attacks." (The Jan. 2, 2002 story said, "While broadcasters trumpeted the traditional crowd estimate of 1 million, police and veteran parade-goers said the crowd seemed slightly smaller this year.")

Obama, the videotape and informing the public

Earlier this month, six months after the original story was published about Barack Obama's ties with Palestinians and Jews, people started calling and sending e-mails to the L.A. Times urging the paper to "release the video." A few notes became a flood of more than 15,000 e-mails by Wednesday morning calling the paper un-American, partisan and worse after Sen. John McCain's campaign accused The Times of "suppressing" a videotape.

The e-mails to The Times included links to an Oct. 25 blog post that said The Times was "hiding incriminating" information. 

Most who called and e-mailed seemed not to have even read The Times' April news article that had brought the event in question to light, headlined "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama: They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel." The front-page piece when it was published drew some criticism from the left. But that reaction has been dwarfed by the number of page views and responses the story has drawn over the past five days. The article examined presidential candidate Obama's view of Middle East politics. It included a description of a gathering held in Chicago by local Arab Americans for Rashid Khalidi, described in the story as "an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights." The story also said, "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times."

The Times itself addressed the criticisms in a news story published Wednesday. In it, Editor Russ Stanton said, "The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Many responses were similar to that of Erich R. Bleiweiss, from Burlington, N.J.,  who said in an e-mail: "Please do not insult me by stating that the L.A. Times is protecting a source. This would only be a matter of convenience on the part of the L.A. Times and nothing more."

Those bombarding the paper saw it as if the issues were diametrically opposed -- "informing the public" vs. "protecting a source." The nuances of the issue were highlighted even more in Thursday's news story in The Times, when various journalists added to the conversation about the principle of how journalists work with sources.

The editor of the April story, Aaron Zitner, who works in The Times' Washington, D.C., bureau, noted that the paper would have preferred to be able to post the video but could not get the source to agree. Zitner said, "If we had not reached this agreement, we would not have had access to this tape at all. Then no one would ever have known Obama attended this event and spoke at it. We were pushing to say the most we could and to present the most we could to readers about what happened."

Thursday's article also quotes Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "The calculus a reporter is making is: 'What is the public good of getting the information, and does it outweigh the limitations that the source wants me to put on the information?' In this case, knowing about this event and being able to describe it to readers seems like a pretty good trade-off for not being able to release the video."

Support for The Times' sticking to its journalistic priniciples came in a post from Bill Sammon, the deputy managing editor of Fox News Channel's Washington bureau. Saying that the choice was "pretty simple," Sammon wrote of The Times and the reporter on the April story, "Indeed, [Peter] Wallsten has little choice in the matter. If he were to cave in to mounting public demands for the tape, no self-respecting source would ever give him another shred of information. Nor should they."

Others had started weighing in earlier in the week.

Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz clarified the issue in a blog entry Wednesday on the Huffington Post: "A simplistic view of freedom of speech would favor full and timely disclosure of all relevant information regardless of any promises made to a source. The more complex view of freedom of speech holds that unless newspapers keep their promises (and unless the law allows them to keep their promises) there will be less not more information available to the public."

Word choices from the political season

As the campaign heats up and the number of politics stories increases, so do the complaints and comments about coverage.  A post on this journal in coming days will tally reaction to recent front-page stories on Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. Meanwhile, word choices from three stories last week each brought multiple comments. In two cases, readers said they saw editorial opinion: in one, a headline that seemed to suggest that the $700-billion financial bailout proposal was in the national interest, and in the other, a story that seemed to bestow on a Democratic candidate an honorific that wasn't given to the GOP candidate.

The third was a matter of subject-verb agreement. In an indication of how grammar can incite in some people the same passion that politics does in others, that one brought nearly 20 complaints.

When mistakes are made ...

The readers' representative office sometimes hears from readers who claim that the first thing they look at each day is the "For the Record" box on Page A2 (published online at a corrections link on the left bar of the latimes.com homepage). Whether it's an affinity for accuracy or a sense of schadenfreude that's behind their interest in the page, the readers are seeing the result of an emphasis on correcting the record that was strengthened eight or nine years ago at The Times.

The "For the Record" section also includes contact information for the readers' representative office. And many of the corrections and clarifications are there thanks to the participation of (as Jay Rosen at PressThink identifies them) the people formerly known as the audience -- those readers who contact The Times in an effort to help keep the published record straight.

Nowadays, The Times addresses inaccuracies that might have gone unnoted years ago. An opinion piece in Op-Ed in 2001 had Toni Morrison born in "Loraine," Ohio. At the time, a reader noted that the city is spelled "Lorain." No correction ran; today it would be corrected. Why the fuss over an E? It's simpler to acknowledge in writing all misspelled proper nouns rather than have staffers debate how many wrong letters of a name warrant correction.

Though some matters are black and white -- ages that are wrong, proper nouns that are misspelled -- in other cases, things are less clear. The section is called "For the Record" for a reason: Not everything is a correction. Sometimes entries simply clarify.

That gray area is where readers, editors, reporters and members of this office often find themselves wrangling over what warrants a for-the-record. Just one recent example: Did the headline and Sept. 10 editorial about the 99 Cents Only Stores upping prices to 99.99 cents deserve a for-the-record? The headline read "The almost 1% solution." Mathematics-minded readers pointed out that the price change wasn't "almost" 1%. But the editorial referred to a "1% price hike," then said, "or rather, a price hike that approaches 1%." Was the thing wrong? Misleading? Yes, and no. Because the correct figures were in the article, it was decided that for the average reader it wasn't a correctible offense. But -- although letters to the editor cannot be used in place of a for-the-record -- letters-page editors did decide to publish on Sept. 14 a reproval from Christopher Hoffman of Long Beach. As Hoffman pointed out, "A 0.99-cent increase is not 'a price hike that approaches 1%,' it equals 1% exactly. Simple math: 101% of 99 is 99.99. Or 99.9900000000 -- without rounding, the need for a parabolic curve or anything else."

What has brought the most debate in the newsroom these days are questions raised by the fact that The Times publishes constantly, on the Internet.

Convention coverage critiques from both sides of the aisle

"I noticed you had a big expose on Sarah Palin on the top of the front page last week. You just had to rain on her parade.  You had better open your eyes to the fact that there are conservatives who live in L.A. too," read part of an e-mail from Barbara Hardesty of Los Angeles.

The Times heard from the other side of the aisle as well, getting a number of comments like this one from Pat Taylor of Calabasas: "I must comment on the inclusion of an article blasting Joe Biden, printed not 24 hours after his nomination.  Your bias is showing and has been each day of the Democratic convention."

Most readers who took the time to contact The Times about coverage of the conventions did so because they were unhappy. Those front-page examinations of the vice presidential candidates were but two specifics readers named. Dozens of others thought the front-page report on Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy was inappropriate; they thought the overall coverage of the GOP vice presidential candidate was too negative. Among complaints from the other side, a number of readers asked why the Los Angeles Times hadn't challenged a statement that Palin made in her speech about Obama's record in the Senate.