THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604200015
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: REPORT TO READERS
SOURCE: Lynn Feigenbaum
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
``Nobody cares about this stuff except the press,'' Lucille said. ``. . . They're pigs and we should never forget that. Treat them like the pigs they are . . . they're scum.''
Primary Colors
A Novel of Politics
by Anonymous
It isn't always fun being a part of the fourth estate. Even at leisure, reading a wacky political novel, your fellow journalists get branded as ``pigs'' and ``scum'' and ``scorps.'' (The latter is short for ``scorpions,'' author Anonymous' favorite epithet for reporters.)
Some folks feel that if the press can dish it out, the press can take it, too. And there's some logic to that. But hopefully, we keep our own name-calling to a minimum.
What has me most uneasy this week is that perhaps we (the collective we) deserve some of those names. Why?
The baby pilot. It's the press that gave much of the fanfare - and thus encouragement - to 7-year-old ``pilot'' Jessica Dubroff, who died when her plane crashed April 11. It would probably be difficult to find a newspaper that didn't gleefully play up her quest to become the youngest person to fly round-trip across the country.
After the fact, Newsweek concluded: ``From now on, press releases touting child exploits that might be dangerous should be tossed where they belong - into the circular file.''
Prodding the FBI. It's the press that reportedly put pressure on the FBI to step up events leading to the arrest of the Unabomber suspect.
On April 5, the FBI publicly thanked CBS News for delaying broadcast of a report that an arrest was imminent.
However, other law-enforcement officials weren't that charitable - they said ``their hand was forced by CBS,'' The Washington Post reported.
Or, as one FBI official told the Associated Press, ``This was a case of the news driving the investigation rather the investigation driving the news.''
Meddling in the mourning. And it was the overwhelming glut of press (and visiting celebs) that slowed the healing process for the Scottish town of Dunblane, where 16 schoolchildren and their teacher were killed March 13 by a man who then shot himself.
Hundreds of reporters and cameramen packed Dunblane, forcing local police to protect families from media intrusion. Not a nice picture.
``Because of the scale of the tragedy,'' said a local leader, ``until the world moves back from us, we feel we can't really get started coming together.''
The press did not take the hint.
On a local level, I've heard few complaints during my three years as public editor about reporters or photographers being intrusive. Happily, we seem to have learned that lesson some years ago.
In fact, our reporting staff is so reluctant to bring notebooks and flashbulbs to funerals that, earlier this year, The Pilot was criticized for not adequately covering the death of a policeman.
But where do you draw the line on stories of national impact? If a Norfolk, Va., newspaper refused to run a story about a 7-year-old student pilot from California, would that prevent the story from being carried by her local daily, the wire services or TV news? Not likely.
If The Pilot refused to run any stories about the suffering in Dunblane, would other journalists leave the town in peace? Probably not. And would readers criticize this newspaper for not giving them an emotional ``scoop'' from the anguished parents? Probably.
And surely no newspaper or broadcast medium is in a position to NOT run the Unabomber story, once it came out, just because the arrest might have been a trifle premature.
No, I don't think a medium-sized newspaper like The Pilot can influence the entire world of journalism. Not by itself, anyway. But if that ethic were adopted by newspapers around the country, it might have an impact. And this is as good a place to start as any.
After all, it's up to us in the press to make sure that we aren't pigs or scorps after all.
THE OTHER 34 VICTIMS. Coverage of the Croatia plane crash that killed Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown unleashed a different sort of criticism.
About a half-dozen readers complained that The Pilot had reported everything about Ron Brown and very little, if anything, about the other 34 people killed in the crash.
``Were they buried in Arlington?'' asked one man. ``Who were they? What should we know about them ? Nothing? Did they not also give their lives for their country? Were they not Americans?''
That barrage is partly, but not entirely, justified. On April 6, two staff writers did a front-page story on one of the victims, a CIA employee from Chesapeake.
And the next day, another front-page story paid tribute to the 33 Americans whose bodies were brought to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
But there was a lapse: The Pilot never carried a list of the casualties - their names, affiliations, ages, hometowns or photos. So, unfortunately, they seemed to become simply ``the other victims'' in the crash that killed Ron Brown.
STEPPING ON THE FLAG. Surprisingly, we had only one complaint to the public editor's office about last Sunday's Commentary front. Maybe that's because my telephone voice-mail filled up.
The theme that day was anger and terrorism in the United States. And a photoillustration showed a pair of shoes - L.L. Bean-type boots, no less - stepping on a dirt-strewn American flag.
Wayne J. Sarapata of Chesapeake thought there had to be another, less offensive, way to illustrate this story, ``especially with all the veterans here.''
``Granted,'' he added, ``it's a staged shot, but it's the idea to me. I've fought for this symbol and the freedoms that allow you to do this.''
I agree with Sarapata. There had to be another way to deliver the message.
A LESSON IN ICELANDIC. And finally, a half-dozen readers gave us a language lesson this week.
They called after reading Wednesday's MetroNews story about a message-in-a-bottle, dropped in the surf off the Outer Banks, made its way to Iceland and a girl named ``Kristin Johannsclottir.''
Wrong! Our callers all told us that in Iceland, girls' last names end in ``-dottir'' (daughter) and boys' names in ``-son'' so that Kristin's last name had to be Johannsdottir.
Probably, they said, the ``d'' got misread as ``cl'' - that, in fact, is exactly what happened.
Helga Burns, who lives in Suffolk, was one of our callers.
``I'm from Iceland,'' she said, ``and Iceland is not mentioned very much so we'd appreciate if it was done right.''
We'll try! MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net
by CNB