Friday, March 23, 2007

Earls of Ethics   [Mark Steyn]

JPod, I couldn’t agree with you more about The Los Angeles Times and the latest sanctimonious huffing and puffing of the ethics bores. The first responsibility of a newspaper is to produce something readable. If you don’t do that, nobody’s ever going to get to experience your fabulous ethical integrity. The Times, like all the other dreary monodailies across the land, has forgotten that these days nobody needs to buy a newspaper: it’s a discretionary item. The only difference is that, unlike The Nowheresville Sun-Herald-Picayune-Indicator, the Times is the monodaily of the entertainment capital of the planet and it’s somehow decided that virtue requires it to be the dullest newspaper on the face of the earth.

The "appearance of a conflict of interest" in the Times scandal is supposedly this: Brian Grazer, Mister Bigshot Hollywood Producer, was invited to guest-edit a section, but it turns out he uses a PR firm which employs a gal who dates an editor at the Times. How this can raise any "integrity" issues is beyond me. If the obscure Times functionary is trying to figure out a way to get to Grazer, using a personal contact who has an in is exactly what journalists are meant to do. Or is the "conflict of interest" supposed to be the other way round? That Brian Grazer, one of the most powerful men in the most powerful industry in town, had been panting all his life for the opportunity to guest-edit four pages of sludge in the local fishwrap but had no way of bringing himself to the attention of a minor Times functionary except through his PR lady’s pillow talk? If the paper truly believes that, it certainly explains a lot.

And in any case how can you have "ethics issues" about a guest-editing feature? By definition, getting non-journalistic celebrities to guest-edit is a marketing gimmick. If you’re so hung up on J-school integrity, maybe you shouldn’t be outsourcing your editing in the first place. At least Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair understand that much.

Read this story about the LA "scandal", as reported by no less than three New York Times reporters in their own inert house style. Doesn’t everyone quoted on every side of the story sound like a sanctimonious pill you’d hate to get stuck in an elevator with? Listen to this fellow:

Henry Weinstein, a veteran reporter at the paper, said he and others had told Mr. O’Shea that they were concerned about even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

"The newsroom’s credibility is the coin of the realm, and the paper shouldn’t do anything to erode its credibility or give the appearance that it has eroded its credibility," Mr. Weinstein said.

How did this guy wind up in the journalism trade? Yes, yes, I know "veteran reporter at the paper" translates to "unionized staffer you’ll never get rid of". Why don’t they just put "May cause drowsiness" above the masthead and leave it at that?

03/23 02:36 PMShare