September 15, 2002
Buffalo NewsWatch: Color-coded justice
How do we skew the news? Let me count the ways....
Buffalo NewsWatch: Color-coded justice
How do we skew the news? Let me count the ways....
(Note: I think I owe Dan Herbeck an apology for this article. I fault him here for giving far more space to Judge Curtin's opponents than to his supporters. "The person quoted far more than anyone else in Dan Herbeck's article," a reader said, "is Curtin himself. If that isn't representing Curtin's side, what is?" In the interest of keeping the full Buffalo Report record online I'm leaving this article up, but you should read it with that reader's observation in mind. BJ 22November 2002.)
On the front page of its City & Region section Sunday, September 15, the Buffalo News ran a long profile of U.S. District Judge John T. Curtin, focusing primarily on the judge's involvement in the dispute over downsizing the Buffalo Common Council and redrawing the boundaries of the city's council districts. The article, titled "Curtin's on the Case," was by long-time court reporter Dan Herbeck.
Herbeck's direct commentary, as always, was balanced. But the article itself was hugely skewed in its quotations and ascribed comments, and those items comprise more than a third of the text.—Herbeck's article is 1966 words long.Perhaps more important than the skewed numbers is who got quoted or paraphrased.
—736 of those words are direct quotations or paraphrases of remarks by people who approved or disapproved of Curtin's past decisions or current involvement in the Common Council case.
—62% of those quotations and paraphrases, including the ones with which the article ends, are from people who opposed Curtin in general or in terms of this particular case.
—38% of the quotations and paraphrases are from people who supported Curtin.
All four of Curtin's opponents were, so far as I could tell, white:
—an 82-year-old retired factory worker who objects to Curtin's decisions reducing segregation and gender discrimination in Buffalo's fire and police departments and schools,All three people who were quoted positively on Curtin were African American:
—the member of the Common Council who chaired the panel that came up with the plan to get rid of the at-large members and Council president,
—an AM radio talk-show jock,
—and a lawyer who wouldn't allow his name to be used (I'm guessing on that one).
—a former president of the Common Council,(One attorney was ambivalent, so I'm not including him in the count.)
—a current member of the Common Council,
—and a minister.
John Curtin has been on the Federal bench longer than almost any other sitting judge. Over a long and distinguished career he has been involved in some of the most important cases in this region. Yet the Buffalo News does not find one white attorney, political figure or community activist to speak favorably of his involvement in any of those major cases. In this personal profile, the Buffalo News does not find a single white person to speak for him. It does not find one woman to quote at all.
That could not have been not easy to do. It's rather like shooting with a shotgun into a barrel of fish and managing to miss everything but the water.
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I'm grateful my quondam Ph.D. student Eugenie Alameda, for alerting me to the ways newspapers use quotations to insert opinion into what are ostensibly news items. Thanks, Jeannie, wherever you are.