Darts and Laurels
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November 27, 2012 11:06 AM
Dart: CBS and the Goldman Sachs solution
Another weak showing on Social Security
Maybe CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was so awestruck by a chance to visit one of the seven trading floors over at Goldman Sachs, and by a rare interview opportunity with Goldman’s CEO, that he forgot about good, skeptical follow-up questions. He and the CBS Evening News get a CJR Dart for this fairly embarrassing effort.
Pelley...
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November 12, 2012 02:50 PM
A dart to Yahoo Finance
For utterly confusing its readers about Social Security
By now we’re accustomed to weak reporting about Social Security, but a piece on Yahoo Finance, part of its “Just Explain It” series, is a real doozey. It does not come within one centimeter of explaining Social Security, and instead misleads the 16,089 readers, as of mid-day Monday, who have weighed in with comments, plus thousands of others who...
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November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Darts and Laurels
Women's work
When The New York Times made Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan its new public editor in September, there seemed to be a general consensus that she couldn’t do much worse than outgoing Arthur Brisbane, lover of truth vigilantism and hater of the Internet. So far, she’s done everything she promised. Along with the bimonthly print column, she updates the...
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October 26, 2012 01:40 PM
The Ad Wars: a laurel to the Sunlight Foundation
Report brings scrutiny to new political ad database
In an important victory for transparency advocates, the Federal Communications Commission recently began requiring broadcasters to post the files of political ad buys online. The new system, which went into effect on Aug. 2, meant that public records of campaign ads would for the first time be available in the same place, bringing fresh hope that murky expenditures on...
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October 8, 2012 11:00 AM
Darts and Laurels
That's sick
The Daily Caller drew some odd conclusions from a June survey of physicians, when it published a report with the headline: “83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare.”
In fact, the survey referenced by Sally Nelson in her article did not mention Obama-care or its official name, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The question posed by the...
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October 3, 2012 03:00 PM
Medicare costs: Are electronic records the solution—or the problem?
A Laurel to the Center for Public Integrity for an expose on "upcoding"
Electronic billing has been promoted as a big cost savings for healthcare. But is it? The Center for Public Integrity has challenged the conventional wisdom, and the rest of us would do well to pay attention.
For 20 months, CPI combed Medicare records and talked to providers, billing consultants, and others to document one big reason for the...
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September 26, 2012 11:00 AM
How the phantom of ‘socialized medicine’ came to be
A Laurel to The New Yorker for exploring the roots of modern political consulting
Jill Lepore deserves a Laurel for her engrossing tale of how political communications came to be so toxic. In "The Lie Factory," Lepore describes the work of the firm Campaigns, Inc., founded in 1933 by Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, and outlines the antecedents for the slash-and-burn, repeat-the-lies, cutthroat campaigning so evident in current political races. “No single development...
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September 20, 2012 03:00 PM
A laurel to The Denver Post
For strong editorial judgment in its coverage of the "47 percent" story
The secret video recording of Mitt Romney’s now-infamous “47 percent” comment went live on the Mother Jones website at 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday. Within a few hours—if that—the political Twittersphere could speak of nothing else. The recording dominated political media like no other story to date in the presidential campaign, garnering nearly two million pageviews for Mother...
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September 14, 2012 05:50 PM
A laurel to FlackCheck.org
For its new guide to video factchecking on air and online
The recent journalistic debate about factchecking has prompted some compelling discussion about different strategies, different methods, and what works (e.g., here and here.) But much of that discussion—and we’re as guilty of this as anyone—has focused on factchecking in print, even as most political messaging and a substantial share of news consumption occurs over the airwaves.
So we’re bestowing...
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September 7, 2012 06:50 AM
LGBT coverage worth a shout-out
The mainstream media much improved its coverage in recent years
In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
Every week in Minority Reports, I’ve pointed out coverage of social minorities that was done badly or could have been done better.
But the fact is, a lot of coverage is very, very good. And I thought that deserved a mention.
Nowhere is this more...
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August 24, 2012 04:04 PM
A laurel to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times
She begins to X-ray the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan
This week’s laurel goes to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times for reporting the increasing skepticism in health policy circles about claims from the Romney-Ryan ticket that Medicare beneficiaries will be hurt because the president’s health reform law cuts $716 billion from future Medicare spending and puts the savings into subsidies for the uninsured called for by the...
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August 17, 2012 03:43 PM
A laurel to The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta
For calling on reporters to repeat the truth as often as needed, and showing how to do it
This week’s laurel goes to Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic, whose astute web piece “What to Do With Political Lies,” offered some simple, useful advice for how journalists can better respond to misleading and unsubstantiated attacks on the campaign trail.
Franke-Ruta starts with the premise—shared by The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis, whose frustrated post about inadequate coverage of some...
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August 1, 2012 05:15 PM
Dart to HuffPo for ‘awesome scoop’
For enabling Harry Reid’s game of telephone sourcing on Romney's taxes
Yesterday, The New York Times published an op-ed by Columbia tax law professor Michael J. Graetz, exploring, as the headline had it, “Mitt Romney’s financial mysteries.” In short, why hasn’t Mitt Romney released more than one year (perhaps soon two) of his tax returns? What could be in them that Romney might not want registered voters to see?
These...
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July 27, 2012 03:10 PM
Laurels to the Las Vegas Sun and News & Record
For a strong ad factcheck, and for grappling with campaigns' message control
Jay Jones has already heaped praise this week upon the Las Vegas Sun’s Anjeanette Damon, but we’ll go ahead and give her a laurel for her takedown of a Mitt Romney campaign ad that ripped President Obama’s now-infamous “build that” line out of context. Damon’s short, to-the-point factcheck item didn’t mince any words, calling the ad “a classic example...
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