When the journalism itself was the bad news

When I sat down last year to consider journalism’s worst moments of 2003, I could easily have limited my list to transgressions committed by the New York Times in the preceding 12 months. This year, it’s tempting to compile a “worst journalism of 2004” list that includes only coverage of the presidential campaign.

But unless I find out that Jayson Blair and Dan Rather have had an illegitimate love child together, I think I’ll again reject so rigidly narrow a focus.

So, in keeping with my previous year-end reports, here -- in no particular order -- are 10 among (alas) many examples of especially bad journalism, beginning with:

* Rather’s “60 Minutes” story, based on what now appear to have been forged or otherwise fraudulent documents, saying that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the National Guard. In his zeal to beat his rivals to this juicy story, Rather failed to either properly authenticate the documents or find out the identity of the original source for them.

The result: a black eye for CBS and early retirement for Rather. Courage, Dan.

* Obsession with what Bush and Sen. John Kerry did and/or didn’t do during the Vietnam War clouded and skewed much of the year’s campaign coverage. Instead of focusing on what the two candidates proposed to do about the war in Iraq -- and our myriad other problems, at home and abroad -- the news media devoted far too much time and space to their activities during a war that ended 30 years ago.

* Jack Kelley was the Jayson Blair of 2004. A panel of independent editors found the longtime USA Today correspondent guilty of “years of fraudulent news reporting.” The panel said “newsroom managers at every level” had ignored, rebuffed and rejected “numerous, well-grounded warnings that he was fabricating stories, exaggerating facts and plagiarizing other publications.”

The result: Kelley resigned even before the report was started, and two top USA Today editors resigned in its aftermath.

* Ronald Reagan was a beloved American icon, so it wasn’t surprising that media coverage of his death reflected a massive outpouring of affection. But much of the media seemed to suffer from amnesia. Yes, President Reagan rightly received much credit for the collapse of global communism and end of the Cold War.

Much less attention was paid, though, to his longtime indifference to the global scourge of AIDS. The epidemic was three years old before Reagan made his first line recommendation for AIDS research funding, four years old (with more than 6,000 American deaths) before he first mentioned AIDS in public and six years old (with more than 20,000 American deaths) by the time he gave his first speech devoted entirely to AIDS. That’s not the sort of record that calls for an addition to Mt. Rushmore.

* “Kerry’s Choice: Dem Picks Gephardt as VP Candidate.” So headlined the New York Post ... on the day that Kerry chose Sen. John Edwards as his running mate. The Post had not been so demonstrably, egregiously, mistaken since -- well, since last year, when it published an editorial congratulating the Boston Red Sox on defeating the New York Yankees for the American League championship.

Of course, after this year’s playoffs, the Post could argue that it had just been premature, even prescient, last year. No such defense will be possible for the Gephardt gaffe. A Kerry-Gephardt ticket in 2008 is about as likely as a Hillary Clinton-Rush Limbaugh ticket.

* Mark Swed, music critic for the Los Angeles Times, described Richard Strauss’ epic opera “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” as “an incomparably glorious and goofy pro-life paean” in a February review. Unfortunately, “pro-life” in his review was changed to “anti-abortion” in the published version, even though abortion is not an issue in the opera, which “extols procreation,” as The Times acknowledged in a correction the next day. Even more unfortunately, a second correction was required the following day to point out that the first correction had “incorrectly implied” that it was the reviewer who had characterized the work as “anti-abortion.”

* The year was virtually bookended by two equally ridiculous controversies involving sex and football, and for the purposes of this list, I’m going to count them as one. The first -- and the worst -- example of media overkill came when Janet Jackson revealed her almost bare right breast for three seconds during the halftime show at the Super Bowl game Feb. 1.

The second came during the pregame show for a late-November “Monday Night Football” game when naked actress Nicollette Sheridan dropped her towel and invited Terrell Owens of the Philadelphia Eagles to enjoy her company, rather than that of his teammates, during the game to follow.

All the television viewer could see was her bare back, above the waist. But as with the Jackson affair, the incident was greeted with howls of media outrage and reams of media coverage. Both acts were stupid and inappropriate. But neither was a threat to the youth of America or the survival of the Republic. In fact, I was far more offended by much of the hypocritical nonsense I heard in the election campaign than by either of these flashes of female flesh.

* Bart Ripp, restaurant critic and feature writer for the Tacoma News Tribune, was forced to quit after editors accused him of using fictitious sources in several reviews and stories. But once he’d gone, Editor Dave Zeeck told readers in an apologetic column, “I began to hear from restaurant owners and employees ... that the problem ran deeper.... Repeatedly I was told of several ways in which Ripp used his job, or tried to use it, to get free meals and other benefits....”

One restaurateur said Ripp had eaten at his restaurant over more than 10 years’ time without ever picking up a check. (Sounds like my uncle.)

* Sinclair Broadcasting wanted all of its 62 television stations nationwide to air a prime-time program attacking Kerry just days before the Nov. 2 election. Only a loud public outcry -- and threats of boycotts, lawsuits and congressional and/or federal regulatory action -- persuaded the company to back off and broadcast a more balanced documentary on 40 of its stations.

The audacity of Sinclair’s original plan is the best argument I’ve seen for an aggressive FCC and an end to media consolidation.

* Overstating newspaper circulation may not count as bad journalism per se. After all, journalists -- reporters, editors, photographers, artists -- have nothing to do with soliciting subscriptions, delivering papers or keeping track of who is (and isn’t) taking the paper. But because Newsday, sister paper of the Los Angeles Times in the Tribune Co. stable of newspapers, was at the center of a circulation scandal this summer, I don’t think I can leave this off my list of shame.

The Chicago Sun-Times and Dallas Morning News were also hit by circulation scandals, but the practice of overstating circulation seems to have been worst at Newsday, where an independent investigation found that the paper sold almost 100,000 fewer copies than it had claimed.

Since newspapers base their advertising rates on their circulation figures, Tribune has set aside nearly $90 million to compensate advertisers. The company also faces shareholder lawsuits and a criminal investigation into the scandals.

Merry Christmas.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.