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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Idiocy of the week: The editors of the Times confuse Tiger Woods with Rosa Parks -- and journalism with ideology.
Dec 6, 2002 | From a memo to the staff of the New York Times, written by Times managing editor Gerald Boyd:
Howell [Raines, Times executive editor] and I believe you should know The Times's response to questions that have been raised by some published reports in recent days about our coverage of the Augusta Golf Club story and our handling of sports columns on the subject.
Translation: Once again, all hell has broken loose because of Raines' dictatorial, paranoid managing style. And once again, just as I did when the Washington bureau exploded a while back, I have to go and do damage control.
First, we are proud of our leadership in covering this story. Our sports staff, with help from many desks, is doing exactly what some "accuse" us of doing: asking questions that no other organization is raising, and pressing energetically for the answers our readers want.
Great! An admission! The Times has been pursuing this story because it's on a crusade -- not because the news is out there.
But what does he mean by "questions that no other organization is raising"? Many other media outlets have covered the Augusta story and asked exactly the same questions that the Times has. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, for example, has run 37 pieces on the story, the L.A. Times has run 27, USA Today has run 24, and the Washington Post has run 22. The difference is that those papers didn't seize on the story as a political campaign, blurring editorial positions with news stories, and blasting minor events, like the resignation of one club member, with big headlines. What distinguishes the Raines Times is not its "flooding the zone" with stories on a subject (which can sometimes be a very good thing). What distinguishes it is the blatant editorializing and no-dissent-allowed ethos that is now a hallmark of what was once the paper of record.
And what does he mean by "the answers our readers want"? Is he clairvoyant? Is he aware of a seething populist groundswell demanding that the Augusta National Golf Club be a central focus for the New York Times' vast reportorial capacity? Can we say "cocoon"? The correct translation: "pressing energetically for the answers our executive editor wants."
Augusta's restricted membership policies have been legitimate news for decades. With the ascendance of Tiger Woods and the campaign by the National Council of Women's Organizations, the club has become an inescapable story.
How on earth is the ascendance of Tiger Woods relevant here? It's only relevant if you believe that somehow members of a racial minority are required merely by virtue of the color of their skin to hold a particular politics. But Woods explicitly disavows the notion of himself as crudely "black," or even that his race is a critical part of his identity. So by what right do Raines and Boyd corral him into their own crusade? This political co-optation of someone on the sole basis of his race is itself a form of racial condescension. The man's a golfer. If he doesn't want this to be his cause, why should the Times foist it upon him? Whatever Boyd says, Tiger Woods' emergence as a golfer does not make this story "inescapable." To argue that is to make an ideological leap. That's not neutral journalism. Call it what it is: ideology.
Ditto for the National Council of Women's Organizations. Lobby groups seize on issues all the time. The Times and other papers routinely ignore them and pursue the news that's out there -- not the news that activist groups want them to pursue. You can do it of course. But it's not news journalism as traditionally understood. It's political campaigning under the guise of journalism.
The decisions faced by CBS, a leading network that is a 46-year Masters partner of the club, are a significant part of the story.
What decisions? CBS has made none. What the Times ran was a story on CBS' silence. In fact, that was the most egregious reach of the whole fiasco.
There is only one word for our vigor in pursuing a story -- whether in Afghanistan or Augusta.
Call it journalism.
Is Boyd saying that the war in Afghanistan, a result of one of the most epochal events in recent American history, is on the same newsworthy scale as the question of whether a few wealthy women can join a 300-member private golf club in Georgia? Is he out of his mind?
