Thumbing thru the NYT on Sunday, I came upon a passage where the paper's 
public editor lambasted someone named Steve Schwenk in San Francisco for wishing 
that a reporter's kid would get his head blown off. Isn't this the dude who 
puts on the Syncro de Mayo event? How civil you Californians are.
Joe 

From Sunday's NYTimes Public Editor Article:

...But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased 
the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message 
that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a 
limit has been passed.

 That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to 
national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney 
wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of 
consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and 
threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to 
be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage 
their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them 
instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.

Here's the whole article....

October 10, 2004
THE PUBLIC EDITOR 

How Would Jackson Pollock Cover This Campaign?
By DANIEL OKRENT
 

SEPTEMBER 26, re "Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions": Faith C. 
McCready thinks "the Kerry campaign ought to be paying The Times a 
consultant/advertising fee" for the article. Scott Libbey of Chevy Chase, Md., calls it "another 
negative article on Kerry," and concludes: "I don't know how you guys can 
look at yourselves in the mirror anymore. I really don't."

 October 5, regarding a few stories: From Michael Malone of Darien, Conn., "I 
know that many of the Times reporters and editors are breathlessly trying to 
get Kerry elected." And from John Owens of San Francisco, "I often won't read 
your paper because of the relentless pounding on Kerry."

Al Markel of San Francisco asks why The Times hasn't reviewed the anti-Kerry 
"Unfit for Command" while Samuel Leff of Manhattan wonders why Justin Frank's 
critical psychoanalytic study, "Bush on the Couch," has been ignored by the 
Book Review editors. Francis Moynihan of Avon, Conn., congratulates The Times's 
Web site for "finally, a headline critical of Kerry" that uses the word 
"pander"; John Owens objects, saying that "a comparable headline about Bush would 
read ' ... according to the poll Americans find Bush to be a liar and an idiot.' 
" I'm tempted to refer all these correspondents, and the many hundreds of 
others they represent, to my colleague Mike Needs, ombudsman of The Akron Beacon 
Journal. "On Monday and Tuesday," Mike wrote in an e-mail last week, "my calls 
were all from conservatives saying the paper leaned left."

"On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday," he continued, "my calls were all from 
liberals saying the paper leaned right. But I did have one caller who said we 
were getting the balance just right. I discounted that one."

 A definition of irony: what an ombudsman or public editor must appreciate to 
survive this campaign.

I've been reading The Times's campaign coverage like any other interested 
(and, by now, exhausted) citizen for months, but with special care, a pair of 
scissors, two marking pens and three other papers to use for comparison since 
Labor Day. Along the way, my own research has been richly amplified by reader 
mail, the buzzing of the blogs and the occasional complaint registered by party 
officials. Two readers generously provided me exhaustive analyses of the 
photographs of each candidate published in The Times (and came to opposite 
conclusions).

 I will stipulate here that I'll be voting for John Kerry next month and will 
further admit that I have bent over backward to listen to pro-Bush 
complaints, in a conscious effort to counterbalance my own prejudices. I don't buy the 
argument a couple of Times editors have made, that because charges of bias come 
from both liberals and conservatives, the paper must therefore be doing 
things right. This makes as much sense as saying that a man with one foot on a 
block of ice and the other on a bed of hot coals must feel just fine.

 In fact, I can find many things to criticize in The Times's election 
coverage. I'm as interested in the inside baseball of campaigns as the next politics 
nerd, but the paper's obsessive attention to backroom maneuvers and spin-room 
speculation obscures, rather than enhances, my understanding of the 
candidates. Much seems directed not at readers but at the campaign staffs and other 
journalists. The chronic overreliance on anonymous comments from self-serving 
partisans in news stories is equally maddening. (I prefer the pieces tagged "News 
Analysis" or "Political Memo," where at least we can hear the sound of the 
writer's own voice, and take into account the writer's apparent views.) And why 
the paper would ask a reporter to provide "real-time analysis" online during 
the debates is beyond me. The very phrase is an oxymoron; analysis requires 
reflection.

 But there are plenty of press critics in print and on the Web, so I'll cede 
the general criticism to them. Here's the question for a public editor: Is The 
Times systematically biased toward either candidate?

No.

So farewell, legions of the left and armies of the right - all of you who 
have been faithful supporters when I've endorsed your various positions in past 
columns, but who will believe I have either lost my mind or sacrificed my 
credibility. I'm grateful for your close attention and your stimulating company, 
and I admire your passionate commitment.

But passion is a distorting lens that makes it hard to perceive the shape of 
things. Partisans will see the depredations committed against their man, but 
won't notice similar articles or headlines or photographs that may damage the 
other guy. Readers outraged by the Sept. 26 piece on Kerry's decision-making 
style ask when The Times will do a similar piece on Bush apparently because they 
didn't notice the one that ran Aug. 29 ("Bush Takes On Direct Role in Shaping 
Election Tactics").

 A Bush-hater will see a front-page picture of the confident president 
greeting enthusiastic crowds and shout "Bias!" much more quickly than he will 
remember the nearly identical photo of Kerry that ran the day before. Republicans 
who object to the play given a recent story about scientists campaigning against 
the president are unaware of the Democrats' cries of bias after The Times 
failed in June to report on an anti-Bush statement signed by 27 retired 
diplomats.

 If there's a commissariat at The Times ordering up coverage to help or hurt 
a specific candidate, it's doing a lousy job; close reading shows bruises 
administered to each (and free passes handed out) in a pattern adapted from 
Jackson Pollock. Many people want to know why the other guy's position is in the 
first paragraph of a story, and their side doesn't weigh in until the sixth; they 
don't notice when it's the other way around. Sherrie Sutton of Manhattan, who 
describes herself as "the only possible Bush vote on the Upper West Side," 
asked why Times headlines consistently use "attack" when Republicans criticize 
Democrats, but not when Democrats criticize Republicans. Intrigued, my 
associate, Arthur Bovino, determined that in the past year, headlined Republicans 
attacked Democrats 12 times and Democrats attacked Republicans 22 times. Ms. 
Sutton replied: "Statistics don't lie, and you've got 'em. Interesting, that in the 
face of facts, I could still feel unsatisfied that campaign coverage by the 
NYTimes is balanced."

 Interesting, and honest, and for most of us, inevitable as well. 
Conservatives thought Cheney won the vice-presidential debate; liberals thought Edwards 
did. I can look at pictures of my children and see that they are flawless; you 
will see them differently (even though they are, of course, flawless). Write a 
book, get a lousy review - it's happened to me several times - and you 
challenge the reviewer's judgment, not your own. We see, and we are more vulnerable 
to, those things that matter most to us.

Unquestionably, individual articles, headlines or photographs do cast one or 
another candidate in a colored light, either rosy or dark. Headlines are 
especially toxic because of their reductive nature. Eric Kessin of Scarsdale, N.Y., 
wrote to say that the Friday, Sept. 2, headline "Jobless Figures Could 
Emphasize Bush's Big Weakness" might as easily have read "Jobless Figures Could 
Emphasize Bush's Claim of Economic Growth." He was right and, in fact, the 
Saturday story was headlined "Job Figures Help President Promote Economic Record"

That was accurate, but it, too, was not without its own coloration. Nothing 
is, especially when removed from the context of the long slog of the campaign 
and The Times's extended coverage. If The Times fails to give prominent space 
to a candidate's speech because it's a repeat of yesterday's, the paper is 
helping the opposition; if it does cover it, it's promoting the interests of the 
repetitive candidate. Show me an interesting photograph, and I'll show you an 
opinion. (I can't wait to hear what readers think of the Kerry portrait today 
on the cover The New York Times Magazine, much less the article itself.) (Check 
that: Yes, I can.)

 Those readers who long for the days of absolutely untinted, 
nothing-but-the-facts newspapering ought to have an Associated Press ticker installed on the 
breakfast table. Newspapers today and especially this newspaper are asking 
their reporters and editors to go deep into a story, and when and where you go 
deep is itself a matter of judgment. And every judgment, it appears, offends 
someone.

It is axiomatic that the facts or characterizations a journalist chooses to 
include can tilt a reader's impression. So can the choice of articles, the 
prominence they're given, the immense weight of the entire, cumulative chronicle 
of a too-long campaign.

 But it is equally axiomatic that the reader who has already tilted toward a 
particular candidate or position will instinctively view the world and The 
Times - from his or her own personal angle.

This piece turned out to be more of a rant than I intended, but given the 
vicious nature of some of the attacks levied against certain reporters, I wasn't 
inclined to be temperate. There are many critics of The Times's election 
coverage who are measured and reasonable, and their views - very different from my 
own - will be represented in this space next week. I also don't wish to 
discourage readers who in good faith find errors, misrepresentations or unfair 
characterizations. They may occur randomly, but their frequency is disappointing, 
and I'll continue to forward meritorious complaints to the appropriate editors 
and reporters. Many will find expression in the corrections column, or in this 
one.

But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the 
level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message 
that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit 
has been passed.

 That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to 
national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney 
wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of 
consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and 
threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to 
be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage 
their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them 
instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.

The public editor serves as the readers' representative. His opinions and 
conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this 
section.

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