The Art of Saying Something When You've Got Nuthin'

Today's Los Angeles Times has an article about some of the people whom Obama might tap to fill David Souter's Supreme Court seat. It mentions Solicitor General Elena Kagan, federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, federal appeals court judge Diane Wood, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

A fascinating list. But where does it come from? The writers never say. In fact, the article and the short trail of articles leading up to it form a case study in wily writing.

The subhead of today's article: "Obama is apparently debating whether to choose a traditional nominee or opt for a 'real world' selection."

The lead sentence: "As President Obama's search for a Supreme Court justice progresses, it appears that the White House has locked in two competing sets of nominees ..."

From the next sentence: " ... much of the speculation about who will succeed (Souter) has centered on candidates such as ..."

The next sentence forms the basis of the whole article: "But the president's own words have made some of the obvious favorites less obvious.

The next sentence is designed to substantiate the prior: "Obama said his choice would possess a 'quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles ...'"

The sentence after that tips the writers' hand: "What Obama meant by 'quality of empathy' has been left to interpretation."

And the next sentence contains perhaps the most sincere attempt to attribute the information that forms the basis of the story: "The White House said the president was seeking a candidate with a diverse set of life experiences."

That's it. That's all they've got. Yet it was enough for them to run a story with prominently placed pictures of the five women.

So I searched for other Times articles that might tell us where the names came from.

I found the May 2 article "Who Will Fill Souter's Shoes," which listed a handful of candidates -- some on today's list, some not. The list is hinged entirely on the opener: "Here are some of the names being mentioned as possible replacements for Justice David H. Souter." (There's that wily passive use again.) I found a May 1 piece with a list of names. Of them, two also appear on today's list: Granholm and Sotomayor. The information is attributed with only: "This list, from NBC's Pete Williams, is making the rounds."

So the nuthin' the Times has is based largely to the paper's own nuthin' and partly on another journalist's nuthin'.

For those not familiar with reporting standards, a competitor's report is usually not a valid source on which to base facts. You can report that the information was reported. But ideally a news organization verifies the information for itself.

I'm troubled by this type of hot-air reporting. But I'm not totally against it. That's because, often, these reports contain much more than hot air. These completely unattributed, based-on-nothing speculations, with surprising frequency, contain solid information. The reporter is trying to share with readers something that, from his vantage point, can be sniffed in the air. And often, his nose knows. There's a good chance one of these people will indeed be tapped. So this brand of B.S. reporting often turns out good information.

What bothers me is that the news agencies aren't more up front with readers. They go to such great lengths to write around the fact that they've got nuthin': "apparently," "speculation has centered on," "appears," "have made less obvious."

Today's LA Times article makes it sound as though the names can be deduced from a few words from Obama and White House staffers. They cannot. Based on what they've got, you could say that Dick Cheney "appears" an "obvious" pick. Cheney is clearly empathetic to his gay daughter to the point of dissenting from his whole party on gay rights issues. You could also deduce that Sarah Palin is a clear choice for the short list. The woman gutted a moose, for heaven's sake. You'd be hard pressed to find in national politics a more "diverse set of life experiences."

I don't like being skeezed. Tell me you've got nuthin'. Tell me you're guessing. Hell, tell me straight up that all you've got are rumors. Just don't tell me that you deduced it logically from solid, sourced public information when clearly you did not.

How Not to Be Missed: A lesson from the Los Angeles Times in how to die quietly and assure that no one cries at your funeral

Which is more interesting?

1. In Niger, nomads with battered Soviet-era weapons are fighting the army to control the uranium under the soil.
— or —
2. Israel is moving to “shore up” pensions.

Another pair:

1. Radicals are protesting at the university of Athens in the wake of a 15-year-old being shot and killed.
— or —
2. A power struggle inside Somalia’s government “grew worse Sunday.”

How about:

1. “Somalia’s president fires prime minister but may not have the authority to do so.”

— or —
2. The above-mentioned story about a Somalian power struggle growing worse.

Final set:

1. The British Prime minister is trying to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attack.
— or —
2. Samir Geaga, a former Lebanese warlord who spent 11 years in prison, says he's "a changed man."

In each of the pairs above, No. 1 is a leading story from today's world coverage in the New York Times. No. 2 is a leading story from today's world coverage in the Los Angeles Times. And, in each of the pairs above, it's clear that the Los Angeles Times has a serious problem.

Both papers carried the news that Bush had shoes thrown at him. (And, despite the fact that most of us saw it live online yesterday, it was reported in both papers with "first-day leads," meaning their angle was that it happened and not another spin that incorporates analysis or aftermath, making the papers look about as relevant and groundbreaking Ford's rollout of the 1990 Escort.)

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been writing about the German chancellor's opposition to a European economic rescue plan. Los Angeles Times readers today wouldn't know anything about that.

Worse, those lame Los Angeles Times story selections are more prominent in the paper than everything but front-page news. When you open today's Los Angeles Times, the first thing you see staring at you on Page 3 in big headline type is the news that Israel is shoring up pension plans.

The New York Times, conversely, starts most of its non-A1 international coverage on Page 6, after its "Monday Business" stories that are both relevant and interesting, including a story about how finance powerhouse Goldman Sachs is expected to report that its profits have dried up. (If you recall, this is the company in which superstar investor Warren Buffet recently invested billions just days before the stock started a freefall that has slashed the stock in half.)

Ever since the mid-1990s when I was a staff reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times' community news division, I've watched in horror as the paper's bosses made one stupid decision after another. But business judgment and news judgment are two different things. True, all the lame story selections in today's LA Times may be caused by staff cutbacks. But if you have a reporter to cover Israeli pensions, couldn't you put that same reporter to better use?

The international story selection is so bad that the LA Times would actually do better to just follow every story of the New York paper. Every day, open up the New York Times, assign an LA Times reporter to every story the NY Times covered, and run it a day later. Day-late interesting stories are better than no interesting stories at all.

My biggest beef with the editorial direction of the Los Angeles Times is that the company has utterly failed to see the bottom-line benefits of community news coverage. I believe that rinky-dink community coverage, done cost-effectively, could have prevented what now seems an unstoppable exodus of readers. And I remember, back when the Tribune Co. took over the Los Angeles Times, there was talk that the new owners wanted to make the paper the New York Times of the West — the undisputed leader in national and international coverage. The people from Chicago didn't bother to ask what Los Angeles readers want. They were going to tell them what they wanted — high-brow world coverage — while killing community news sections at the same time. Then, they couldn't even deliver adequate world coverage, much less force it on a readership that clearly has a greater interest in entertainment-industry news and quality schools coverage.

There's an old "Simpsons" episode in which chronic wino Barney Gumble makes a documentary film about his alcoholism. The closing line: "Don't cry for me. I'm already dead." (Lest you think that the "Simpsons" were getting too serious, I mention that the film was titled "Puke-a-hontas.")

The last throes of the Los Angeles Times seem to echo Barney's plea. Yet, coming from them it's not funny.

More on How to Read the News

In yesterday’s post, I ranted a bit about the quality of information sometimes presented to general news consumers.

Today, if you’ll indulge my getting off the grammar topic just a bit longer, here’s a sample of the starkly higher quality of information presented to a subset of news consumers – those who read the Wall Street Journal.

The whole story is here. The nuggets I found most notable are excerpted below.

In short, banking-industry lobbyists are all over the government’s proposed $700 billion financial system bailout to assure the most favorable distribution of the dough. At the same time, they are openly lobbying to assure that defaulting homeowners in bankruptcy don’t receive any breaks. (Oh, and they want to make sure that foreign banks with exposure to the bad mortgages get some of the U.S. taxpayer money, too.)

Yup. While NBC News serves stories like the one I wrote about yesterday, this is the kind of news being served to Wall Street Journal readers.

Here are the excerpts:

* Lobbyists and financial-services executives are working deep connections within the administration to ensure as many institutions as possible benefit from a $700 billion federal mechanism to buy distressed assets, then sell them off in better times.

* They also oppose proposals by Democrats in Congress to provide mortgage reductions for homeowners facing bankruptcy. Bankers say such a move would raise rates for mortgage seekers, as banks factor in the possibility that a loan would be restructured in court.

* "How you publicly oppose loan modifications and bankruptcy law while at the same time advocating a huge taxpayer bailout is beyond me," said a lobbyist for a major bank holding company. "Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered."

* Foreign-owned institutions with U.S. mortgage-market exposure are fighting to benefit from the federal rescue.

* By Sunday, the group (the Financial Services Roundtable, a group of chief executives of the nation's most powerful banks, brokerages and insurers and a leader in the lobbying) had gained the support of Mr. Paulson for its stance that foreign-owned banks must be included in the rescue.

* The industry has gone directly to the SEC demanding a letter changing U.S. accounting rules that require banks to state the value of their assets at the market price. Banks say that without such a change, the government would pay an artificially low price for distressed assets.

* Banks and brokerages have banded together to push back against any effort by Congress to include a provision in the bill allowing judges to decrease the amount homeowners must pay on mortgages that are part of a bankruptcy proceeding.