Introducing Radar's new media critic, Charles Kaiser

Welcome to Full Court Press. Every Monday morning I will try to point you to some of the best and worst in newspapers, magazines, TV shows, blogs, books, and movies. I have a simple philosophy: Good work in any medium is so rare that whenever I encounter it I want to shout about it to the heavens. So, whether it's a column dissecting George Bush by the late Molly Ivins, a brilliant first novel, like Call Me By Your Name, by André Aciman, or an extraordinary movie, like The Lives of Others, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, I will try to convince you that you should not live without it.

At the same time, an age like this has more than its share of inflated reputations, and I won't hesitate to puncture them. Obviously, I can't possibly be comprehensive here. But if, after reading this first effort, you see any similarity between your sensibility and my own, please use this contact information to alert me to anything you see that you think warrants high praise or high dudgeon. I will need legions of smart legmen and -women to make this enterprise successful.

I started my career at the New York Times when I was an undergraduate at Columbia; stayed at the Times until I was 29; spent two years as the press critic at Newsweek (the best job I ever had, until I wrote something that made Kay Graham nervous) and 14 months covering the media for the Wall Street Journal. Then I wrote my first book, 1968 in America. It's no coincidence that one of my brothers is also a journalist and all three of us are authors.

My father, Phil Kaiser, was the main inspiration for our career paths, although my mother was another voracious reader. Phil had the highest standards for fairness and thoroughness of anyone I have ever known. Though never a journalist himself, he was the best media critic. One reason for that was a thorough knowledge of history. He was also on a first-name basis with dozens of the writing and broadcasting giants of his time, including Ed Murrow, Scotty Reston, Teddy White, and Isaiah Berlin.

My brothers and I received the most important part of our education at the dinner table. The biggest competition was to tell the best story—and to always get your facts right. If you failed to put things in the right order, my father would bellow, "Great reporter! You buried the lead of the story." After a while, you didn't do that so often. Phil died last May at the age of 93. This effort is dedicated to his memory, and to my mother, Hannah, who, at 94, still reads all of the Washington Post every day.

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One on One

Full Court Press begins this week with an interview with Andy Rosenthal, editor of the New York Times editorial page, because he's done the best job writing about the biggest catastrophe of our time: the War in Iraq. Rosenthal's single finest effort was the 1,700-word editorial that he penned himself and published on July 8, 2007. It filled the whole editorial well, and it began with the kind of simple declarative sentence that, sadly, has practically disappeared from daily journalism: "It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."

I live in hope that one of the leading presidential candidates will have the courage to adopt that common-sense position before the first primary.

Andy and I have several things in common: We both had Jewish-immigrant fathers and Christian mothers, each of us is the third of three sons (birth order is everything), and we share a special interest in his late father, Abe.

Abe Rosenthal was for many years the chief editor of the Times. When he was the managing editor, he was also my first boss in the newspaper business: I was his clerk during Watergate. Andy Rosenthal talks about moving his pages on to the Web, how Arthur Sulzberger was ahead of his own editorial page on Iraq, and when Andy discovered that his father once belonged (briefly) to the Communist party.

Okay, I buried the lead.

Bad News for Rupert

After a fierce tug-of-war, the Financial Times snatched away prized Wall Street Journal reporter Henny Sender—despite a phone call to Sender, from Rupert, on his yacht in the Mediterranean, begging her to stay. Both the FT and the WSJ reportedly offered Sender business-class travel everywhere and unlimited freedom on the capital markets beat, where she always beats the competition.

Worse news for Rupert: Sender told FCP that all of her sources urged her to jump to the FT.

Brain Drain: Sender follows Hillary Stout, Ed Felsenthal (ex-WSJ deputy managing editor), Dan Golden, Doug Frantz (ex-New York Times, ex-Los Angeles Times managing editor), Peter Waldman. Scott Paltrow (Gwyneth's cousin), and Tara Parker-Pope out the Journal back door since the Murdoch deal was announced.

Future Peril: Sender also identified the biggest challenge the Journal faces as it struggles to convince its readers that Rupert won't corrupt its legendarily honest news-gathering ethic. "What you have to worry about is not Murdoch overtly interfering, but what people might do to ingratiate themselves," Sender told FCP. "I think that's always the fear—the self-censorship. But I have a lot of confidence in Marcus Brauchli."

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Horse Race: First
Issues: Last

A new study released last week by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard says the press is doing a terrible job of giving the public what it says it wants to know about presidential candidates.

A poll by the Pew Research Center found that 77 percent of Americans claim that they would like to know more about the candidates' stands on the issues—while only 1 percent of the campaign stories studied this year "examined the candidates' records or past public performance."

Other findings: 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign—nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates or the candidates' ideas and policy proposals. Obama got the most positive coverage (46.7 percent); McCain the most negative coverage (47.9 percent); and Elizabeth Edwards got more coverage than 10 of the candidates—and nearly as much as her candidate husband.

If you missed this, it might have been because the Times devoted exactly 400 words to the study—and buried them at the bottom of page C7. Did the political editor downplay the story because it made him look bad? Not at all, Timeswoman Kit Seelye told FCP. She never even offered the story to the political editor—she gave it to the media editor, because Seelye says that it was about the press, not about politicians. Readers of Seelye's political blog got a little more detail—there the reporter managed 744 words about the study.

Campaign Edition

Skip:

New York Times reporter Janny Scott spent many weeks trying to find discrepancies between the first volume of Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father, and the recollections of acquaintances who knew the candidate during the two years he spent living in New York while attending Columbia College in the early 1980s. Her findings: Obama "exercised his writer's prerogative to decide what to include or leave out." Also: Obama's recollection of his summer at Business International Corporation "differs, at least in emphasis" from that of two of his coworkers.
Subtext: One of Scott's main sources for the story, Dan Armstrong, reported on his blog that Scott's main obsession seemed to be with "the drug question." Armstrong writes that this is something he actually likes about Barack: "He's very open about the fact that he inhale. ... He did it—like everyone else—and it's no big deal. ... The question is how much he did it and when he stopped. And all I can conclude is that Ms. Scott came up empty. Because she sure asked the question enough."
Conclusion: The headline says it all: "Memories of Obama in New York Differ." Was this worth more than 2,700 words? It was not. But investigative reporting is expensive. And when a reporter spends weeks on a fruitless quest, her editor is often reluctant to kill her story, even when she has turned up nothing worth printing. This time, he should have spiked the whole thing.

Skip:

The December issue of the Atlantic treats us to 6,300 words from Andrew Sullivan about Barack Obama. The cover story has all the hallmarks of the Sullivan oeuvre. It has virtually no original reporting and a whole series of startling conclusions: "Obama, moreover, is no saint. He has flaws and tics"; "In politics, timing matters"; "On domestic policy, the primary issue is health care"; "A large consensus in America favors legal abortions during the first trimester and varying restrictions thereafter"; and finally (my personal favorite), "What does he offer? First and foremost: his face."
Conclusion:The bottom line here is that Barack is Andrew's latest infatuation. The fact that Sullivan's previous love objects have included Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the war in Iraq, and unsafe sex makes this endorsement slightly less exciting for the rest of us. Personally, despite some of his missteps, I'm still pulling for Barack. So, having Andrew in my corner reminds me of Tom Lehrer's description of how liberals felt when LBJ began to escalate the war in Vietnam in 1965: "like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis."

Read:

James Traub's excellent piece about Obama and foreign policy (only 5,194 words!). Unlike Sullivan, Traub actually makes an effort to contact experts who reside outside of his own brain. Among his many interesting nuggets: "There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living," as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. "The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama." When Obama said yes when asked, "Would you be willing to meet, separately, without preconditions ... with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?" and Hillary attacked him for it, the guardians of the conventional wisdom decided Hillary had won that round. But "a CNN focus group concluded that the dust-up was Obama's best moment"—which also happens to be the way I felt about it.

Read:

Russ Buettner, Michael Powell, and William K. Rashbaum on Rudy's loyalty to his bounder police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik.
Best Moment: Kerik getting kissed by all the members of Rudy's inner circle after accepting a new job in the administration. "I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family," Kerik wrote in his autobiography. "I was being made."

Every thinking New Yorker knows that the election of Rudy Giuliani to the presidency would be the greatest catastrophe imaginable. This story is part of a continuing series in the Times, designed to make this fact obvious to the rest of America. It's a genuine public service.

Read:

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's cover story on presidential candidate(?) Michael Bloomberg. Meacham spent all last week traveling with Bloomberg, and decided that two anti-Semitic incidents in Bloomberg's youth were the keys to his motivation. He also got this: "This is a billion-dollar campaign," Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg's chief political adviser, told Newsweek aboard Bloomberg's Falcon 9 jet flying from Washington, D.C., to Seattle late last week. He then amended the declaration—slightly: "If it happens, it's a billion-dollar campaign."
Newsweek's poll shows Bloomberg drawing more Republicans than Democrats if he actually runs.

Read:

ACLU legal director Steve Shapiro's lead letter to Time magazine explaining why the Supreme Court still matters (just 251 words).

Read:
Connie Bruck's excellent piece in the New Yorker on Sam Zell, his flowing Arab robes, and the biggest distressed equity he has ever tried to acquire—the Tribune Company.

Skip:

Kevin Corke's rave review on NBC Nightly News of Fred Thompson's utterly pedestrian performance on Meet the Press. Among Kevin's reasons for praising Fred: his straightforward endorsement of torture.

Note to Kevin: See Rendition, a powerful movie that should be required viewing for every American. (Ignore the lukewarm reviews: It's a must-see.) And sign the Human Rights First petition to end American torture now. By the way, if waterboarding isn't "real" torture, why was it the Gestapo's favorite technique?

Winners:
Molly Bingham and Steve Connors for Meeting Resistance. A spectacular documentary shot in Iraq in 2004, it features 12 members of the Iraqi resistance on (blurry) camera, explaining why they oppose the American occupation. A remarkable journalistic achievement.

Sinner. Shameless:

Washington Post media writer Howie Kurtz's new book, Reality Show, has gotten at least 18 mentions in his own newspaper in the past seven weeks—nearly all of them in one of Kurtz's own blogs, discussions, or articles, most recently here. To no avail: The book is a colossal flop (Amazon.com sales rank: 5,867). Defining moment: Jon Stewart asking Kurtz about his major "scoop": how the three networks turned America around on the war in Iraq. Stewart's question? How could this calamity have been covered to produce some other result? Kurtz looked like a deer in the headlights.

Worst Questions

1. Tim Russert: There's been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values. I want to ask you a simple question ... What is your favorite Bible verse? (Note to Russert: See U.S. Constitution, Article VI: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.)

2. Tim Russert: Have you seen a UFO?

3. Question chosen by Tim Russert: For many here in New England, the answer to this next question may be the most important one you answer tonight. Red Sox or Yankees?

4. Tim Russert: Would you pledge to the American people that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb while you are president?
Senator Clinton: I intend to do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
Tim Russert: But you won't pledge?
Senator Clinton: I am pledging I will do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
Tim Russert: But they may.
Senator Clinton: Well, you know, Tim, you asked me if I would pledge, and I have pledged that I will do everything I can [laughter] to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. [By Sunday, Tim still hadn't learned his lesson; he repeated the same question to Fred Thompson on Meet the Press.]

Worst Posture: Hillary turning to glare at Edwards and Obama whenever either of them attacked her.

Worst Satire: David Brooks, Feel the Love

Welcome to the magic of our Nation's Capital, where 57 percent of the population is black, 52.5 percent are women, 5 percent are gay—but just about everybody is straight, white, and male on Sunday.

Box Score
Sunday, November 4, 2007

	Meet the Press (NBC–Russert)	Face the Nation (CBS–Schieffer)	This Week (ABC–Stephanopoulos)
White Men	3	3	11(!)
White Women	0	1	2
Black Men	0	0*	0*
Gay People	0	0	0
Actual News	0	0	0

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. He has also written for Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, New York, The Washington Post, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, Details, Interview, The Advocate, Vogue, and Salon. He has taught journalism at Columbia and Princeton. Full Court Press is his first blog. To find out more, visit charleskaiser.com

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