Caller-Times Editor Shoots Back About Cheney 'Scoop', Gets Shot Down

[bigtree]

Corpus Christi Editor Shoots Back At Critics Over 'Podunk' Coverage of Cheney Shooting
Vice President Cheney

February 20, 2006 4:30 PM ET
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035276


Corpus Christi editor:

"While the White House press corps seemed stunned that the Caller-Times broke the story on Dick Cheney's hunting accident, our local readers expected it," Avertyi declared in her piece that also ran online. "And we were glad to meet their expectations. Frankly, the newsroom had some difficulty understanding what all the hubbub was about last week. As national newscasters asked repeatedly why a local newspaper first reported the story instead of the White House press, we kept asking, 'Why not?'"



Shane Fox, promotion manager at a newspaper in Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph wrote (in part), in response:

"The two Texas newspaper reporters who broke the Cheney story seem to suffer from being a part of the institution instead of covering the institution. Local journalism has a peculiar set of circumstances not faced by national reporters which often leads to this syndrome. ...

"This is probably why a reporter would accept as unchallenged fact a Sheriff's statement that, 'We've known these people for years, they would not call us and lie to us.' It also would explain the reporter's statement that they 'don't want to look like pit bulls.' One wants to take the reporter by the hand to a quiet booth in the rear and over a cold beer say, 'This is precisely when you need to start disbelieving, when a law enforcement official says someone involved in a shooting accident would not lie -- that is not how police think. There is something wrong.'

"Sometimes local journalists have to take on the challenging task of developing a story rather than reporting what others have to say."


complete article: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002035276

[alarimer]

1. Well the Caller Times runs mostly wire service reports

I doubt they have the caliber of reporters of so-called "national" papers. I live here; I read that rag (sometimes) and it is mostly worthless. Which is probably why they chose some local reporter to break the story rather than anyone else.

[bigtree]

4. I think the reporter who took the call was the lifestyles or food reporter

[tanyev]

2. Is it fair to say a reporter "broke the story" when all she did

to get it was answer the phone?

[rfranklin]

3. And if she did anything other than transcribe the call...

that would be the end of her "journalism" days in Texas.

[darkmaestro019]

5. you know, my stepdad threw a fit that I should be a journalist--

Because I write sci-fi and horror, and of course, as he said "It's all writing."

(eyeroll) (head plus desktop)

I told him I'd rather die than be that kind of whore, and that I'd rather never write another thing in my life than to use the one talent-type thing I have that I LOVE in the service of Them. I was seventeen. He gave me the usual disgusted look as though I were the one that were crazy.

(gestures at this cluster you-know-what, and the increasing stink of fascisim) I was right again, I think.

And please, nobody say that "Well, if people like you had gone in...." I'd have been fired or worse the second I had the audacity to tell the truth. I flatly don't believe that anything as hopelessly cancer-marbled with evil as the press (or politics, for that matter) can be changed for the better from inside. That's what people tell themselves so they can sell out without losing sleep.

[bigtree]

6. it's hard to be an independent journalist and make a living

much less find a visible forum where anyone can read your writings.

It's a balancing act.