D-day coverage criticized

On Saturday, June 6, about two dozen readers took the time to send e-mails or call The Times to complain about what wasn't there: "Why no D-day coverage in the first news section of The Times on June 6?" wrote Ray DiPietro of Rancho Palos Verdes. "I have no doubt that extensive front page coverage will be provided to President Obama's speech at Normandy in the Sunday, June 7 issue. But it is a mystery to me why the Times would not print today .... the story of the 65th Anniversary of the D-day invasion and the story of the incredibly brave men who made it happen."

The lack of coverage "is a stinging insult to all the veterans who gave their lives and those who survived the horrors of that day," Lauren Flahive of West Covina wrote on June 6.

DePietro was right about the next-day coverage: On June 7, The Times published an article about the president's speech at Normandy, France, noting the 65th anniversary of the D-day invasion. Why didn't editors make note of the history behind June 6 on Saturday?

It isn't a new question, and it isn't one asked only about D-day.

Clinton photo: 'Disrespectful' or 'a telling gesture'?

Reader J.C. Devin of Malibu sent a note of complaint regarding the image that accompanied a June 6 story about a couple who, federal authorities say, conspired for decades to provide classified information to the Cuban government.

The photo of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ran four columns over the 23-inch story and was at the very least, said Devin, "disrespectful."

Wrote Devin: "All those hours of research, fact checking and efforts at journalistic balance were lost when the individual who chose the uncomplimentary [Associated Press] photo of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to accompany your words blew it. The photo, capturing Secretary Clinton in an awkward moment at the news conference, did little to enhance your article or communicate any journalistic integrity of the L.A. Times. The Times' pride in its professionalism should ensure photo choices that support the content of an article and that don't come off as disrespectful."

The caption said, "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, shown at a news conference in Washington, has ordered an internal investigation, a 'comprehensive damage assessment' and a review of State Department security procedures."

Photo editors respond.

Voters the 'problem'? Cheney 'spewing'? Says who?

Readers asking last week about a Top of the Ticket blog posting that ran in print, as well as a front-page analysis, had one thing in common: They were objecting to what they called opinion, even bias, in the news pages of The Times. 

Covering taxes, covering rallies

Carl E. Ossipoff of Newport Beach wrote, "8,000 people show up to a 'Tax Revolt' rally in Fullerton and the L.A. Times fails to cover it because it's not newsworthy? Maybe if you covered the things important to the folks in the Southland, you'd sell more papers."

So said a number of others who wrote over the weekend asking why there was no story on a rally promoted by KFI-AM talk-show hosts to protest recent proposed tax increases. The rally drew (depending on who's counting) 3,000 to 15,000 people.

The Times noted the event with a short post on the L.A. Now blog on March 8. The rally was covered by the Orange County Register and San Gabriel Valley Tribune (which noted: "The radio station reported as many as 15,000 people attended, but a Fullerton police sergeant estimated 3,000 to 8,000 people were there").

Other events with similar numbers don't always get stories; an earlier post on this journal gave the thinking on that last year.

California Editor David Lauter wrote back to scores who asked about the event. The gist of his response: No, The Times didn't cover the rally. But yes, The Times has covered the issues that led to anger behind the rally.

UCLA student and illegal immigration

The front-page article, a Column One, was about a freshman struggling to make it in her earliest days at UCLA. The box accompanying the story said in part: "This is the first in a series of occasional articles about a UCLA student, in this country illegally and largely without financial or academic support, during her freshman year."

The very words "illegal immigrant" bring criticism (many readers argue that "illegal alien" is more accurate; some say there's less bias in "undocumented individuals"). Articles focusing on a person or specific situation inevitably bring larger reaction.

In this case, nearly 300 readers commented on the Feb. 2 story of 18-year-old Karina De La Cruz, who was born in Mexico, lives in San Pedro and is the first in her family to go to college. About half of those who responded said they sympathized with the girl, although some of them said they still thought illegal immigrants shouldn't attend public colleges. (Typical response: "I feel sorry for the girl you wrote about. But she still shouldn't be taking public funds for her education.") Others wondered why an article was written focused on someone in this country illegally rather than many others who face uphill battles in school and financially.

"Incredible story," wrote reader JoAnn Burciaga. "My heart just breaks for this young woman trying so hard to change her life. My husband and I would like to know how we can help her. Please let us know if a fund has been created. Is there a mentoring program available?"

Jean Goodrick of Canoga Park had another reaction: "There are thousands of citizens (including my own children) who are trying to attend college and need financial assistance but can’t get in, much less get financial aid. Try writing about them, or perhaps the returning vets who can’t find jobs."

"It's not either/or," responds California Editor David Lauter. "The thinking on why we did the story is pretty straightforward: illegal immigration is a major issue of public concern in California. One aspect of that issue, which has been very hotly debated, is whether students who are undocumented should be allowed in California's public colleges and universities. That issue has been debated in the Legislature and is currently the subject of a court case challenging California's tuition policies."

His and assigning editor Beth Shuster's idea was to explore that public debate by finding out what the day-to-day experience was of an undocumented student.

Reporter Jason Song's own curiousity dovetailed with the assignment. Song covers the Los Angeles Unified School District and says he has long wanted to paint a picture for readers of how overwhelming college can be for a freshman who is unaccustomed to consistent study habits and homework load. Song found De La Cruz through his reporting on LAUSD, and covered her for the last nine months — from right after she got accepted to college to her first days at UCLA.

Says Shuster, "As Jason reported this story, the other angle that emerged was that UCLA admitted a freshman who did not meet the same academic requirements of most of the students there, she had a lower GPA, lower standardized test scores and placed lower in her high school ranking.... So the story was about the trials that this girl faces as both an illegal immigrant without the same access to state and federal financial aid, but also about the challenges someone like this faces in other areas as well ... academic, etc. I think all of this made the story richer."

A number of readers said The Times shows bias by covering illegal immigration in such a personal way; there's the chance readers see sentimentality by doing day-in-the-life-of coverage (as an editor said in an entry on this journal last year about coverage of illegal immigration, "once you introduce a real human being, things tend to get complicated").

Several more reader responses are below.

Proposition 8: We get e-mails...

Readers have homed in on three facets of coverage when it comes to Proposition 8:

• Before the election there was an ad that popped out, literally, at latimes.com readers as they perused the editorial board's stands online.
• Just after the election there were complaints that the newsroom called the vote too soon, and wasn't giving adequate coverage to those who were protesting the results of the vote.
• In the days since have come complaints that the coverage is trying to make Yes on 8 voters look bad.

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.

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.

Racial identification: descriptions in full

Thursday's report in The Times on a series of armed robberies along Melrose Avenue said, "All three of the robbers have been described as men in their early to late 20s, ranging from 5 feet 6 to 6 feet tall and weighing 150 to 200 pounds."

At least a dozen readers sent a question along the lines of what reader Howard Douglas asked: "Why tell us the gender, age, height and weight of the suspects without telling us their ethnicity? Perhaps writers for The Times are forbidden from giving complete descriptions of suspects. I've reported crimes to the police, and one the first questions is, 'Was he white, black, hispanic or Asian?' Is The Times afraid to repeat that information? Sounds a bit wimpy to me. In the future, give us the whole description or none of it. Example: 'Some people robbed a bank today...' "

That, more or less, is actually how it's supposed to work. The information was originally included by reporter Andrew Blankstein, who had the handout from the local police and the group Melrose Action Neighborhood Watch. It said, "All three suspects have been described as African American males ranging in height of 5'6" - 6'0" tall, 150 –200 pounds – in their early to late 20s."

Says senior copy chief Mark McGonigle, "This was caused by a misunderstanding of our policy on using racial identification. The copy editor took out the racial description supplied by the reporter, thinking that there were not enough other descriptive elements to leave it in. In fact, the policy states that it's all or nothing: Either there's enough information to make for a meaningful description, which should include race, or there's not enough of a description and all the elements of the description should be taken out of the story. I've talked to the copy editor and slot on the story to make sure they understand the policy."