The corrections column of today's New York Times carries the following item: "A front-page article yesterday about the mayoral primary election in Los Angeles misspelled the surname of a professor at California State University at Fullerton who commented." In the New York edition that Smartertimes.com bought yesterday morning, there was no front-page article about the mayoral primary election in Los Angeles. The article quoting the professor in question appeared inside the national section. The article may well have been fronted in the Times national edition. But even so, to hundreds of thousands of New York readers this morning, the correction will make it look like the Times' standards of reporting have so eroded that the newspaper's editors are unable to describe accurately what was on their own newspaper's front page the day before.
"Racial Protests": The New York Times stylebook contains a caution about the loose use of the word "riot." But the newspaper's tiptoeing around the situation in Cincinnati strikes Smartertimes.com this morning as a bit contorted. A dispatch from Cincinnati in the national section of today's New York Times refers to "sporadic vandalism," "violent protesters," "street violence" and "racial protests." It reports that vandals "have staged hit-and-run raids on dozens of stores, looting some of them." It reports that more than 40 persons have been treated at hospitals, more than 100 people have been arrested, a curfew has been imposed, and there is serious talk of calling out the National Guard. Sure sounds like a riot to Smartertimes.com. Certainly, to refer to the situation as "racial protests," as in, "The last racial protests that attracted outside attention in this city were in 1968, in the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." -- is an inappropriate resort to euphemism. Not every "racial protest" involves looting and violence, and to refer to a riot as a mere "racial protest" erodes a meaningful distinction. The Associated Press is referring to three days of "rioting" in Cincinnati. The Washington Post this morning refers to the 1968 Cincinnati riots as "riots" and quotes a 16-year-old referring to the current activity as "riots." The New York Times, on the other hand, seems reluctant to call a riot a riot.
Keep the Press Out: An editorial in today's New York Times comes out against allowing the camera-toting press access to the execution of Timothy McVeigh, arguing that "by publicly televising Mr. McVeigh's execution, broadcasters would be showing the very kind of act -- the taking of a human life -- for which Mr. McVeigh is being executed. The telecast would appeal to the basest instincts of the viewing public, and would inevitably coarsen our society." This logic would also bar cameras from wars, and, if carried to its logical conclusion, would have prevented the publication of some of the most memorable and Pulitzer-prize-winning news photographs -- photographs that have been republished in the Times. If the Times is as opposed to the death penalty as it claims to be, it should want to show the execution so that the American public can see what its government is doing. The coarseness, such as it is, is in the government's act, not in the press's broadcast of it. In any case, the Times isn't finally persuasive that the decision on whether to coarsen the culture by broadcasting the execution should rest with the government rather than the news organizations themselves. The implicit argument is that the constitutional imperative against cruel and unusual punishment trumps the constitutional imperative for freedom of the press. But the Times never explains why one should outweigh the other.