News gatherers stumble -- into newsmaker territory

The nation’s news media -- large and small, print and broadcast -- performed admirably, often heroically, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. Alas, unaccustomed as most of them are to such sustained excellence, many stumbled so badly in 2002 that it would be even more difficult than usual to list just the 10 worst journalistic moments of the year. So here, in no particular order, is a purely arbitrary selection of 10 among many such moments.

1. CBS made it known that its eye would not tear up if Don Hewitt, the creator and executive producer of “60 Minutes,” retired -- or to use the network’s euphemism, “put a transition plan in place.” Hewitt is, after all, 80, which in television translates as “too old to run a show that would attract the younger audience our advertisers crave.” On the other hand, 80 is a critical number in television; it approximates the cumulative IQ of the network executives responsible for much of what passes for entertainment.

2. Associated Press executives, understandably proud of the global news service’s ubiquity, have long quoted Mark Twain’s observation, “There are only two forces that can carry light to all corners of the globe -- the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.” But in September, the AP fired reporter Christopher Newton for making more leaps than Twain’s celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. Sometimes, AP said, he quoted nonexistent people from real institutions. Other times, the people he quoted were real but the institutions were fictional. In all, the AP said, it could not confirm the existence of 45 people and a dozen organizations in Newton’s stories.

Can we now expect AP executives to begin citing another Twain quote as well -- “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to”?

3. A Washington Post story disclosed the lack of qualifications and experience of the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq. For some reason, the Post decided to tell its readers -- in the first paragraph of that Page 1 story -- that one of the inspectors has “a leadership role in sadomasochistic sex clubs.” Why was that relevant? Does it automatically disqualify him to search for nuclear weapons? Personally, I’d love to see a whips and chains aficionado nosing around Saddam Hussein’s private haunts. Since Saddam seems both sadistic and masochistic, maybe the inspector could lure him into a little snuff action and save us all a lot of time, pain and money.

4. More than 40,000 people showed up in April for an Israel Independence Day Festival in Van Nuys that doubled as a rally to support Israel during Mideast hostilities. The mayor was there. So was the governor -- and many other dignitaries. The story got big play in the local media. But the Los Angeles Times didn’t publish a word on the rally in the next day’s paper.

The explanation: “We didn’t cover it because we didn’t know about it,” one Times editor said. Huh? Traffic near the event was so heavy that radio stations broadcast advisories, and the event was listed on the City News Service “budget” that serves as a tip sheet for all local media. I don’t agree with angry Jewish leaders who saw this as a deliberate slight by the paper, but it was an oversight of monumental proportions. Next thing you know Trent Lott will say he “didn’t know about” Strom Thurmond’s racist behavior.

5. ABC wanted to replace Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” with David Letterman. Letterman ultimately declined, but had he accepted the offer, ABC’s next step no doubt would have been to give Peter Jennings’ job to Oprah Winfrey.

6. The Seattle Times won two major national journalism awards for a series of articles investigating the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. But less than three weeks before the people who pick the winners of an even bigger prize -- the Pulitzers -- were scheduled to vote this year, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Laura Landro, attacking the Times series.

Landro had been treated successfully at the Hutchinson Center, so she was not exactly an unbiased observer. But even if she could write dispassionately, why didn’t she write her story in the Journal right after the Times series was published, in March 2001, instead of waiting a full year and doing so on the eve of the Pulitzers? Landro’s Journal story was headlined “Good Medicine, Bad Journalism.” It should have been “Pulitzer Politics, Bad Judgment.”

7. When the Chicago Tribune fired longtime columnist Bob Greene after learning that he had had sex 14 years earlier with a 17-year-old high school senior who came to the paper to interview him, critics were divided over whether the punishment fit the crime. But there was little disagreement over how the Tribune handled the story. Badly. The paper announced Greene’s dismissal in a brief story that did not say just how old the girl was, just when the sex took place, whether Greene wrote about her in his column, or just what Greene’s “inappropriate sexual conduct” consisted of.

No self-respecting high school editor would have accepted so incomplete a story, but such inappropriate journalistic conduct is, alas, all too common when newspapers write about themselves.

8. Virtually every time there’s a big news story, I wonder if CNN should be renamed SNN -- as in Saturation News Network. Or Sensational News Network. Or Speculation News Network. The sniper who terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in October gave SNN its latest opportunity to wallow in wretched excess, and never was that more apparent than on the day authorities arrested two men who, it turned out, had nothing to do with the case.

But before that was disclosed, CNN filled its air time with experts who assured viewers, as Sgt. Maj. Erick Haney put it, “Well, obviously, just common sense says ... that these are the two suspects, without a doubt.” In fact, Haney not only “knew” these two men were suspects in the case, he knew why they’d surrendered (“I believe they were just near exhaustion”) and how they were responding to interrogation (“I don’t think they’re going to shut up for days”). Too bad he didn’t shut up.

9. The Boston Phoenix, one of the better alternative newspapers, provided the wrong kind of alternative to the mainstream media in June when it published a photograph of the severed head of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in Pakistan. On its Web site, the paper also published a link to the video of Pearl’s execution.

Stephen Mindich, publisher of the Phoenix, said his decision to share those two gruesome bits of photojournalism with Phoenix readers “came from my gut, from my brain, from my heart.” Really? I wonder how his brain managed to convey that message, given where his head must have been at the time.

10. Even the New York Times -- the nation’s best paper -- managed to embarrass itself this year. The Times killed two sports columns that disagreed with its editorial positions on the refusal by the Augusta National Golf Club to admit women members. Times editors ultimately relented and published the columns -- with minor editing changes -- after a week of offering such lame explanations and justifications for their original decision that they made “The dog ate my homework” seem worthy of Diogenes.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.