Readers Note: Here’s another post by Bob Wilson, a well-respected and now retired Carolina journalist with thirty-plus years experience in North Carolina.
John
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The Raleigh News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer are North Carolina’s two largest papers. As journalists say, “They have the means.”
So why weren’t either one of them the first paper in the state to call for Durham DA Mike Nifong’s resignation?
That distinction – and distinction it is among NC journalists who value public service – belongs to The Wilmington Star which told readers:
[Nifong] owes an explanation to the people who elected him.IMHO The Star is leading the state on the resignation issue because its editorial pages staff is tough, smart and independent of interest group considerations
He owes it to the people of this state.
But he owes them more: his resignation.
Which brings me to The Durham Herald-Sun and its editor, Bob Ashley.
Full disclosure: I was editor of the Herald-Sun editorial pages from 1991 to
2005, when Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group, one of the true bottom-feeders in American journalism, bought the paper at a vastly inflated price.
In the early 1970s when I was an N&O reporter, Ashley worked for the now defunct Raleigh Times. He was a personable guy who filed his stories on time.
But as an editor in Durham, Ashley has made some serious mistakes at the H-S. The paper's falling circulation is a reliable indicator of those mistakes.
Ashley came to Durham from a small-town newspaper that curries favor with local interest groups. Durham, however, is not a small town. It is a mid-size city. It's population is about half white and half black, with a growing Hispanic presence. And it is a city with raw-bone racial politics; indeed, it has been said that Durham is so tough it eats its dead.
Ashley quickly aligned the H-S with the Durham's largest and most influential political group, the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People.
That alone was a major compromise of the H-S' independence, but Ashley also set about ingratiating himself and the paper with Durham's manifold civic clubs, charitable organizations and religious groups, and, yes, Mike Nifong. You name it, Ashley was there.
So what's wrong with that? Everything.
A newspaper that sides with interest groups, political figures and the like puts its credibility up for target practice. That's been a long-term issue with the N&O, which is still seen today by many North Carolinians as a mouthpiece for the state's Democratic Party.
I don't know if the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, once one of the country's better newspapers, still requires its editorial writers to stay free of membership in local organizations, but the idea remains sound.
I never joined any local political groups, civic clubs or other organizations in
Durham. Nor did my executive editor, Bill Hawkins, curry favor with interest groups. We let them come to us; we did not go to them.
This policy might seem exclusionary, but it had a serious purpose: The Herald-Sun's editorial independence was more important than individual participation in interest groups.
Newspaper editors and reporters cannot be cozy with the people and organizations they cover. It just doesn't work.
Alas for Bob Ashley's Herald-Sun and Durham, that cardinal rule of journalism has been ignored.
-- Bob Wilson
5 comments:
Excellent points, as usual, by Bob Wilson. Wonder what Mr. Wilson makes of the late March coverage by the N&O? Some think that the newspaper created the climate for Nifong to operate in. It would be worthwhile to see Mr. Wilson's dissection of the infamous N&O Precious-as-victim interview/story.
Great post. Thanks for sharing your insight into what has been a perplexing aspect of this story, why Ashley is such a major suck-up.
Anon 12:55, I read the Precious interview story again a few minutes ago. In my opinion, that dreadful little text is destined to become a textbook example of how not to write a story.
The story is remarkably biased toward Precious and against the lacrosse players. The reporters made no attempt to go beyond the spin they were getting from Precious and others.
The reporters empathized with Precious because they work in, and are products of, an ideological environment that elevates real or alleged victimization, particularly among minorities, to the status of sainthood.
In the modern media, most reporters have little lasting contact with victims of crime; in fact, most reporters have little contact with common folks, period. Thus, the N&O is not unlike The New York Times in its newsroom culture; both papers have isolated themselves to a remarkable extent from the real world. What has grown up in the newsroom culture since the 1960s is a left-leaning group-think, nurtured by a virulent feminism and the usual suspects of race and class.
The N&O's March 25 tear-jerker was the spawn of this "new journalism," which at its worst embraces subjectivity -- emotion -- over even the appearance of objectivity -- facts.
Should we be surprised that the Duke lacrosse players got such a raw deal early on from the N&O? No. The newsroom culture was programmed to behave as it did in those first few weeks. The same is true of Duke's notorious Gang of 88.
Fortunately, the N&O still had a couple of reporters, Joe Neff and Ben Niolet, who hewed to the old standards. Sometimes it seemed there were two N&Os, Melanie Sill's and another one that published Neff and Niolet's work. Brave souls, those two. They swam against a strong tide.
Thanks, Bob, for your insight into the N&O. Many of us have been wondering how a respectable newspaper could publish such drivel. Can you provide any background on the reporters and editors involved in the March 24 and 25 stories?
Read the N&O March 24 and 25 coverage again and then read the topic about the baby story being planted — started by Tony Soprano — on the Liestoppers discussion board. The whole family could be involved in this criminal conspracy against the lacrosse players. It makes the fundamentally disingenuous N&O "interview" look even worse and more dangerous.
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