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Dart
to NBC, for a landslide vote for fiction over fact. With the amorphously pale line between news and entertainment growing fainter by the hour, the network presented, on its imaginary White House drama West Wing, an imaginary debate between imaginary presidential candidates moderated by the real-live veteran newsman Forrest Sawyer and carrying throughout, in the lower right-hand corner of the TV screen, the authoritative logo of NBC News. The episode was but the logical, if surreally absurd, extension of the trend to enlist the news media in the cause of artistic verisimilitude, a trend that in the not-too-distant past led some media critics (including this one) to question the participation of, for example, the MSNBC newsroom in a Hollywood space-disaster thriller. Later in that same November sweeps month, NBC again confounded reality in its coverage of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. While other outlets were reporting on a significant accident — the 515-pound M&M balloon had become entangled in a light pole that crashed into the crowd and sent two injured spectators away in an ambulance — the happy chatter of Katie, Matt, and Al continued on unspoiled as producers silently substituted footage of the same balloon from last year’s parade. Another victory for illusion over truth, entertainment over news.
Laurel
to the Toledo Blade, for exposing an unholy alliance. Suppose that while running a diocese in northwest Ohio you learned of complaints that one of the priests was raping a choir boy: Who you gonna call? For years, unfortunately, the answer was, You call the cops, and then the problem disappears — no police report filed, no inquiry conducted, the perpetrator transferred to a distant parish, free with an unblotted record to prey again. Such are the dispiriting findings of a three-month investigation into the newly emerging issue of the role of civil authorities in the too-familiar scandal of pedophile priests. Based on a review of thousands of documents and dozens of interviews, the report describes what had been for decades an entrenched culture in the law-enforcement community — a culture in which, when conflicting loyalties to church and state were put to the test, allegiance to the church prevailed. Even now, the Blade reports, the slowness of some prosecutors and children’s agencies in responding to such complaints points to the lingering legacy of a long-gone police chief whose unwritten rule had instilled the fear of God (and of being fired) in those who would even think of arresting a priest. The Blade’s report was riveting and timely, appearing during negotiations on a controversial bill that would extend the statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases beyond the current two years.
Laurel
to The Record, in Bergen County, New Jersey, for putting the journalistic rubber to the environmental road. In a massive, five-part series eight months in the making, the Record exhaustively explored the “Toxic Legacy” bequeathed to the region by the Ford Motor Company when it closed its huge assembly plant in Mahwah a quarter century ago. From the team’s own commissioned testing of the astonishing quantity of poisonous paint sludge indiscriminately dumped by the automaker into rivers and streams and near mountains and farms, to its house-to-house interviews in poor communities where children play in the colorful sludge — and where rare and fatal sicknesses are all too common; from the company’s complicit deals with the “waste management” industry run by the mob, to its noncompliance with EPA rules and the failure of that agency to enforce them; from internal documents showing that Ford was aware for decades of the hazards, to its malevolent gift of tainted land to the state for a public park — with all this and more, it took only a few days before officials were revving up to fix the unconscionable mess. Unknowable at present, of course, in terms of drinkable water, is just what having had Ford in its past may mean to the public’s future.
Laurel
to National Public Radio, for drafting the military into action. Despite repeated efforts by news organizations to secure for the hundreds of journalists covering Iraq safer passage to the Green Zone — getting to the checkpoint for that official place of business for briefings, parliamentary activities, and the trial of Saddam Hussein requires a long, unshielded trek that constantly exposes them to gunfire, abduction, and other deadly assaults — the U.S. military would not be moved. That is, not until October 19, when NPR’s David Folkenflik confronted officers at the Green Zone press center with a copy of an internal e-mail that seemed to suggest that the virtual protection of their p.r. image was a higher priority than the actual protection of journalists’ lives. “I suspect it’s only a matter of time before someone bags a reporter and gains unwanted public attention,” ran the chillingly callous message. “We need to find . . . the magic words to answer the press when they ask publicly why we’re shooting at the media.” Within hours of Folkenflik’s interviews, things got busy in Baghdad. “Early this morning,” Folkenflik was able to report, “workers set up tall concrete barriers to protect a new dropoff point for journalists — and to shield their path better as they walked toward the checkpoint for the Green Zone.” Memo to the Pentagon: those are the magic words!
To read the articles in the January/February 2006 issue, click here.
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