Psychographics and electoral corruption: Adrian Chen finds that “the model of the voter as a bundle of psychological vulnerabilities to be carefully exploited reduces people to mathematical inputs.”
Data-obsessed political marketing can undermine democracy, he writes.
Update: “I should not have believed a word he said,” author Gay Talese said after the Washington Post informed him that property records showed that the subject of his latest book, a Peeping Tom motel owner, did not own the motel from 1980 to 1988. While Talese disavowed his latest book in the Post’s report, he and his publisher defended the book to the New York Times.
By Casey Bukro
One questionable ethical episode after another piles up in the New Yorker’s excerpt of a forthcoming Gay Talese book. In “The Voyeur’s Motel,” a serial Peeping Tom owner of a motel might have witnessed a possible murder. He invites Talese to join him in secretly watching a couple have sex.
By Talese’s own admission, there’s reason to believe some of the story is not true.
It’s possible the New Yorker was swayed by the author’s fame in publishing a titillating account of voyeurism. The Aurora, Colorado, motel owner kept detailed written accounts of what he saw through the ceiling ventilating system grille openings over more than a dozen rooms. Talese writes that he could not verify some details, including the murder. He shrugs it off as poor record-keeping.
Although the motel owner, Gerald Foos, admits to being a voyeur since the age of 9, he considers himself a researcher of human sexual habits. Talese knows the subject as well, having explored it in 1981’s “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.” He’s also an inventor of New Journalism, a style that depends heavily on subjective observation.
“Over the years, as I burrowed deeper into Foos’s story, I found various inconsistencies – mostly about dates – that called his reliability into question,” Talese wrote in the New Yorker excerpt. Most editors might balk at publishing a story on which the writer himself casts doubt upon its reliability. But the New Yorker forged ahead.
At least Talese points to the holes in his story. Under the rules of Old Journalism, that would have qualified “spiking” the piece.
Continue reading The Peeping Tom Chronicles: Gay Talese’s New Journalism Tease
By Casey Bukro
The New York Times is a classic case of how poorly the media tell stories about themselves.
Times Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. fired Jill Abramson as executive editor, touching off a storm of speculation over who did what to whom and why, and motivations behind the story that was told or not told.
Days after the dismissal, Sulzberger issued a statement complaining that “a shallow and factually incorrect storyline has emerged.”
One version of that storyline held that Abramson was sacked because of her complaints that her $525,000 salary was less than her predecessor’s, a man, setting up the argument that a woman was paid less than a man for the same job.
Another thread was Abramson’s management style, described as polarizing, non collegial, mercurial and pushy, traits that might be tolerated in a man but not in a woman.
“I decided that Jill could no longer remain as executive editor for reasons having nothing to do with pay or gender,” said Sulzberger’s statement, as he hoped to clear up the matter as it seemed to get murkier.
Hard-charging media organizations like the Times often demand full disclosure from the government agencies or corporations that stumble into controversial territory. But, when media get into trouble, they often get defensive, say they’ve been misunderstood or say it’s nobody else’s business.
The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics says journalists should “abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.”
Another good guideline in a crisis is: Tell it all and tell it fast. That advice comes from Frank M. Corrado, a Chicago communications specialist.
Some observers say the New York Times affair has settled into “navel gazing by the media,” described as an occupational hazard. The writer of that sentiment wondered why Abramson was fired only nine days after the Times’s chief executive “gushed” about her.
A Vanity Fair report, including an interview with Sulzberger explaining his intentions, said “The New York Times is an institution whose employees are adept at, perhaps addicted to, in-house Kremlinology.” Even those closest to the story are wondering if they know the true story, or the whole story.
Women flocked to Abramson’s defense, but it was not universal.
Some of the more thoughtful and detailed information about the New York Times affair appears in The New Yorker, by Ken Auletta. He says:
“It is an affair in which neither side behaved well or with any finesse and the institution, which is so central to American journalism, suffered.”
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 