Trying To Glean What’s Happening in Montgomery Using AP
June 27th, 2007Here’s a vignette from the overflow courtroom in the federal courthouse in Montgomery from Tuesday, plus a couple of wire stories from today.
During an afternoon break in the main courtroom where the action is going on, I went over to the overflow courtroom down the hall to check in on the “mainstream media.” Most of the reporters covering this trial mostly stay in that room, where they can have their laptops handy and watch the entire proceedings on a TV screen. This includes the free-lance reporter working for the New York Times, who never sat foot in the main courtroom on Tuesday.
The problem is, it’s kind of hard to cover the trial from there, since the audio is a tad iffy on the lawyers and the witness stand.
Many of the members of the media, especially photographers and the broadcast reporters, simply hang out in front of the courthouse in the vigil to find out what the sentence will be. For many news organizations, that’s all they care about: How long will the feds throw former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy in jail? And how soon?
Well, when I went into the overflow courtroom, there were only three reporters there. But being the joker that I am, I said, in jest, “I just thought I would come over here and harrass the mainstream media.”
In response to that, ole Bob Johnson with the Associated Press looked up, smiled and said: “Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. We’re just the Alabama media that is covering up the whole, real story.”
Now ole Bob is not one to cover anything up on purpose, I don’t think. But I must say, it is hard to glean what is really going on from his wire reports.
Can you make heads or tails of this?
AP: Prosecutors Say Siegelman, Scrushy Have Shown No Remorse
AP: Sentencing Hearing Resumes for Siegelman, Scrushy
One more story on Bob Johnson. Back during the trial of Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore, I was kicked out of a press conference because I was not on the official invitee list Moore’s PR people had put together to try and spin the story for the print media. You can read about it here. It was pretty funny.
Well, later on, during the Scrushy trial in Birmingham when I was covering that story for the New York Times, I ran into ole Bob on the street one day on the way back from lunch and had a conversation with him about that day.
He sort of dismissed me on that story, saying the local press had already “heard it all” and were not very interested in my questions, since they had all been asked and answered. But that is not true, because no one ever asked Judge Moore the question I wanted an answer to and never got.
That is, how do two small town Alabama lawyers and Sunday school teachers like himself and Hugo Black come to such drastically different conclusions about the meaning of the Constitution? Bob never asked any question like that and neither did anybody else. In fact, in all my days of popping into Montgomery to cover political and legal stories over the years, I’ve never seen ole Bob ask any questions at all.
Mostly, he tends to use the same old background paragraphs over and over again and never really do new, original news stories to inform readers in any detail about what is going on. Maybe that’s why people think the Alabama press is not getting the story.
I don’t know if it is laziness, incompetence or someone higher up telling them no one is interested in the gory details on these stories. But it certainly makes it hard to find out what’s really going on in Montgomery.
Will someone down there please explain this quantitative formula Judge Mark Fuller is using to arrive at the prison time for Siegelman and Scrushy? If you don’t understand it Bob, ask a damn question or two.
June 30th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Good commentary. It rang a bell with me. I used to send an occasional e mail to editor(s) at the Huntsville Times pointing out what I saw as a major flaw (usually of ommission) in Alabama AP reporting on political-governmental affairs. No effective response.
Maybe they like it that way, maybe they don’t perceive the story they’re printing is only a part of the story, maybe both.
I tried to make my observations analytical, not based on political bias, but it looks like they were the proverbial farts in the wilderness, so far as beneficial effect on acuity at Times news editors daily meeting is concerned.
At least the sports section and the editorial and op ed pages can maintain a claim to validity, so far as small city daily journalism is concerned.
We’re left with the Internet, bless its soul, and the dozens, hundreds, thousands of readers getting things pointed out to them. Keep up the good work.
Ivan Swift
ivarut@ardmore.net
June 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Thanks Ivan,
There are two sides to this story.
There are many in the craft of journalism who would call it a sin to razz another journalist in public. But we passed the Rubicon a few years ago when the media writing about the media reached its zenith in the case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair.
Now, blogs have taken up the mantle of trying to hold the press accountable and filling in the blanks between the coverage that is limited by time, space and human imagination.
As in many things, it takes awhile for national trends to trickle down to Alabama.
I didn’t take any real pleasure in giving ole Bob grief in public. But it is my belief that a media critic with some credentials can have a positive effect on the journalism the public gets. And I can tell you that after this post went up and was seen, ole Bob worked his ass off the next day and tried maybe a little harder than he usually does. He may have a hard time admitting it, but his stories the next day were noticeably better.
Also, when I visited the overflow courtroom on Thursday, the AP’s Phillip Rawls was sitting behind Bob looking over his shoulder. And, Rawls actually made it into the main courtroom for the sentencing and wrote a story himself. We linked to Rawls’ and Johnson’s followup stories on the news page on Saturday - above the fold. They were both decent stories, in part inspired by the criticism.
We did not link to Jay Reeves’ follow-up story from the Birmingham bureau about Richard Scrushy. You can find it on the Regional AP link in the Loucust Fork News. Why? While it was a better written story than usual coming from those quarters, it looked to me like one more vicious stab at Scrushy and had nothing to do with the real point of the case, which was for the Bush Justice Department to “get” Siegelman.
Media criticism can have a positive effect, if it is done in a not so vicious, partisan manner - and if the media being criticized takes it the right way and examines itself and vows to do better.
Maybe the AP should consider hiring a blogger to handle certain things for them, like keeping up with the details of what’s going on in a closed federal courtroom during high profile cases.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I recall from my days in the newsroom many years ago how thin skinned newspaper reporters were and - you’re right - a little spurring helps the horse move along better, so far as news editors are concerned. We’ll see.
Ivan