November 16, 2002
Buffalo NewsWatch
The Buffalo News "I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-business-council" interoffice
memo
by Bruce Jackson
Sed quis custodiet ipsos
custodes? But who watches the watchmen?
Juvenal, Satires
Steve Bell's troublesome book
Last month, Buffalo Report ran "Editorial moonlight at
One News Plaza," an article about the book written by Buffalo News managing
editor Steven Bell and distributed by the Business Council of New York
State, the main point of which was that the economy of upstate New York
is just fine, folks. Bell's book is in perfect opposition to well-researched
page-one news stories on the region's economy his own paper had published.
Which is to say, the managing editor of the Buffalo News was writing
one story and his reporters were writing another. Some reporters on the
News thought it unseemly for the editor of their paper to be doing work-for-hire
for the state's chamber of commerce, especially work that contradicted theirs
in ways potentially useful in George Pataki's everything-is-fine-and-getting-better
re-election campaign.
Bell's memo
A week after the article was posted, a veteran reporter
at the Buffalo News called and said, "Steve Bell posted an apology on the
bulletin board two days after your piece appeared. It raises more questions
than it answers. It's damage control. One of the guys calls it the 'I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-business-council'
memo.'" Shades of Monica!
Here is Bell's memo in its entirety:
Memo
To: The Staff
From: Steve
Re: An apology
Date: Oct. 16, 2002
The
book published in August called "Upstate New York, Corridor to Progress,"
has caused some legitimate concerns in the newsroom and since I care deeply
about what we're all doing at this place, I sincerely apologize to any
of you who feel this work was inappropriate.
A California-based publisher of specialty books asked me to
do the text (11 chapters) for a 150-page book about the upstate region
as a place to live and work. It was a freelance assignment and I received
a flat fee for writing chapters covering things like sub regions, tourism,
high tech, manufacturing, quality of life, etc.
Essentially it's Prospectus, in coffee-table book form. It
takes an optimistic look at upstate and its economy, but does not omit the
warts and realities of history. I reviewed the project with Margaret and
she insisted that in my contract with the publisher, I would do no promotion
of the book, nor receive any royalties or commissions from sales, either
on the book or its advertising.
The publisher arranged for the New York State Business Council
[sic] to sponsor the book. The Business Council had no editorial
control or say about what I wrote. What I did not foresee, and certainly
apologize to the staff for, is that this would be published in such close
association with the Business Council or that it would trumpet the book
as it has. I realize that the ever-present "appearance of conflict" is real
and I apologize as well if members of the staff feel I've done anything to
undermine the paper's or their credibility. That was not my intention.
I hope this answers the questions out there, but if anyone
would like to discuss this further with me personally, I'd be glad to.
Steve
People who don't look you in the eye
I always tell my students to be very parsimonious in their use of the
passive voice because the passive voice tells a careful reader that you're
probably hiding something. It's the literary equivalent of not looking somebody
in the eye. The classic example of the passive voice in action is Mom coming
into the kitchen, seeing the shattered glass and other stuff on the floor
and asking, "What happened?" To which Junior responds, "It fell. It broke."
Bell uses the passive voice twice in his first sentence. The first five
words are particularly good: "The book published in August...." Why not "The
book I wrote...?" You know why. Saying "The book published in August" doesn't
have any Steve Bell in it. "The book I wrote" does.
What stands out for me in Bell's letter is this: Bell doesn't apologize
for one single thing he did. I can't find anywhere in the letter
him saying that he thinks there's anything wrong with the editor of a newspaper
writing a book-for-hire for a business organization, the contents of which
may be directly contrary to facts developed by his own news staff, a book
published and given away while there is an election in process in which
that editor's words will have weight for the side in whose it interest it
is for those writers to be wrong.
He only apologizes if people feel bad. That is meaningless. You can't
apologize for somebody else's feelings. You can only apologize for what you
did. Bell nowhere does that.
His statement that he agreed with Margaret [Sullivan, the editor in chief
of the Buffalo News] that he would not take royalties is not very interesting:
books like this aren't meant to sell; they're given away. So there aren't
any royalties. Royalty income was never an issue.
More interesting is that Bell says he agreed that he wouldn't receive
any commissions on the book's advertising, which means he knew or thought
beforehand that it would be having paid ads, which it in fact seems to have.
There are several pretty pieces about specific corporations, perhaps written
by their ad agencies, perhaps written by Bell, and those were almost certainly
sold pages. No contract writer agrees in front not to take money from the
paid ads if the writer doesn't think there aren't going to be
paid ads.
That suggests Steve Bell knew this was going to be the kind of book that
has paid ads. What kind of real book—the kind you buy in Talking Leaves
or Brentano's, say—has paid ads? Did you ever see paid ads in a Faulkner
novel? A Michael Beschloss book on one of our presidents? A Harlequin Romance
on romance? No, you didn't. The kinds of books that have paid ads are themselves
ads, books that are puffery, flackery, books hyping something. Or high
school graduating class albums, which Bell's book isn't.
What the reporters said
One reporter said, "That letter answers nothing. I'd like to know who
paid him. Why did he think it was acceptable to do this? Why did he think
it was okay for him to write what he calls 'an optimistic look' on the upstate
economy when he knows the real condition of the upstate economy? He says
he didn't know the Business Council was supporting this book. When did
he find out? When he found out, did he do anything to curb their promotion
of the book? As far as I'm concerned, Bell's credibility in the newsroom
has been damaged by this, and his memo only made matters worse, not better."
Another reporter said he was uncomfortable talking about the whole sorry
mess. "Because you would get in trouble if they knew you were talking to
me?" I asked.
"Oh, I'd surely get in trouble, but that's not what I'm uncomfortable
about. I don't like saying bad things about the paper. I love the paper.
But we need to be examined as everybody we examine. How can we do our job
if nobody calls us on it when we're doing it wrong?"
He was annoyed about Bell's making money when ordinary reporters were
prohibited by the paper from writing for free about subjects far from their
beats. "They're telling writers at the News they can't write for local publications
about things that have nothing to do with their coverage area, but then
you get a managing editor doing it. That's insane. But it's an insane place
to work."
Another said: "Steve Bell has a lot of control over what gets covered.
He's one of the two or three editors who is going to see almost every front
page package that we do. He has the power to have a lot of effect on the
local news coverage, whether it's tweaking it or allowing it to be done.
All those kinds of things. If he's in bed with the people we're covering,
well..."
It's slippery at the top
Which goes to the heart of the matter. How are we to regard the editorial
positions taken by the News when the roles and ethics at the top are this
slippery?
An ugly example. Last week, a Buffalo News editorial viciously trashed
U.S. Congressman John LaFalce for having asked for an inquiry into the
propriety of what seemed to be exercise of improper influence by a highly-placed
employee within the Department of Interior on Interior Secretary Gale Norton
when she was considering an important decision about casino gambling in
this region. A favorable decision or silence would have been enormously
useful to Governor Pataki in his re-election campaign. Norton opted for
silence. In his letter about the matter LaFalce said nothing about the
casino proposals themselves; he simply asked for clarification about the
propriety of the influence. His letter was occasioned by a detailed, well-researched,
page-one story in the Buffalo News.
So here's a highly-respected public official taking a page-one Buffalo
News story seriously enough to ask the government agency involved to look
at its own behavior—and the Buffalo News editorial page responds by trashing
him for daring to ask the question that the Buffalo News itself made it
necessary for him to ask.
It got uglier. On November 15 the News published a badly-drawn and stupider
than usual editorial cartoon by Dick Bradley (apparently their replacement
for Tom Toles) showing John LaFalce and Sam Hoyt in boxer shorts and undershirts,
silly losers in the casino issue. From verbal scorn the News editorial
page had moved to graphic caricature, all because LaFalce had asked a question
prompted by the reporters of the Buffalo News itself.*
Do the editorial and cartoon simply reflect the honest and considered
opinion of the Buffalo News editorial board? Or do they reflect some kind
of make-nice with the upstate Republican establishment?
We'll never know, and that's the problem. If we can't trust the motives
of the editorial board, if the News's newswriters can't be confident that
their own editorial page won't undercut them a few days later, how can we
take the editorial pages of the Buffalo News with any seriousness at all?
How can we know that the reporters are being allowed to cover the stories
that need covering to the extent those stories deserve, or that those stories
aren't mutilated when they get to the copy desk? How can the reporters
themselves do their jobs honorably?
How can you and I know if we're getting anything more from the Buffalo
News than all the news they want you to know?
Telephone truth
Steve Bell ended his letter to the newsroom by saying he would be glad
to discuss his letter with anyone who would "like to discuss this further
with [him] personally"
Well, I had all those thoughts I just told you about, so I thought it
would be useful to discuss them further with him personally before I published
any of them. Maybe he'd have something to say that would cast it all in
a reasonable light.
I called him.
"I'm not interested in talking about it," Bell said.
*I couldn't find Bradley's crude cartoon
on the Buffalo News web site, which may be deliberate on their part. The
site has a hot link to Tom Toles, who now works in Washington, D.C., but
not a link to Dick Bradley, to whom they seem to have givenToles's desk and
inkpot. But my scanner works. Click here to
see the drawing.