By TRIPP FROLICHSTEIN / It is said you should never cuss around microphones because you never know if it will get on the air. Perhaps the same needs to be said when you write captions. You never know when it might be shown.
By GEORGE SALAMON / Edward Klein has long been nemesis to Hillary Clinton. Now his latest hit on the Clintons, “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas” has just overtaken Hillary Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices” in sales on the Times’ own bestseller list. How mortifying that Klein’s dishing of “implausible” dirt on both families was outselling the former Secretary of State’s own display of grand vision and noble compassion the Clintons sell as the raison d’ etre for past and future service in public life. It was too much for the Times’ reporters Amy Chozick and Alexandra Alter. In the second paragraph they label passages in Klein’s bestseller “implausible,” but don’t show us what makes them “implausible.”
By GEORGE SALAMON / The headline on p. A1 of the June 16 New York Times read: “Population Shifts Turning All Politics National.” The story by Ashley Parker and Jonathan Martin drew that conclusion from the results of two elections, the one in Virginia that cost Eric Cantor his position as majority leader in the House and one in Mississippi that could unseat another Republican leader, Senator Thad Cochran. The story proposed that “the axiom that ‘all politics is local’ is increasingly anachronistic.” But it’s just this axiom that inspired Dave Carr’s column on the same day.
By WALTER JAEHNIG / In late February, NBC’s “Today” show hired two teenage-looking actors (both aged 21 or older) and sent them to a liquor store in New Jersey. The actors loitered outside, asking customers entering the store to buy beer for them. All male customers refused, but several women took their money and purchased their six-packs. This was not a huge story and probably proved nothing. It did, however, stimulate discussion about the adult role in underaged drinking, especially when the “Today” staffers interviewed the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving about the implication that women were more willing than men to provide teens with alcohol. Television newspeople love this kind of story – and, because of their visual dimension, can do it very well. But news stories that involve reporters as active participants in making the news also raise ethical questions, as can be seen by the controversy resulting from KSDK’s investigation of security at five St. Louis-area schools.
By TRIPP FROHLICHSTEIN / This is the story of a good idea gone bad. It is the story of a series of mistakes made by a television station. And it is the story of lessons learned by a school district. On Jan. 16, KSDK Channel 5 (the NBC affiliate in St. Louis) was investigating security at five different schools in the area. One of those schools was Kirkwood High School. The station’s undercover effort would result in a lockdown at the high school, angering students, staff and parents and ultimately forcing an apology from the station. The details of this story are pieced together from interviews and previous accounts; Channel 5 officials, when asked for an interview, said the station had no further comment.