Elizabeth Doherty thinks that Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, makes too much money.

Simon's $300,648 salary was included in a survey of Washington, DC-area salaries printed in the Washington Post on Sept.7. Doherty said she had considered re-starting her lapsed membership with her local station, WAMU, until she saw Simon's salary.

"I considered rejoining until the Washington Post article Labor Day weekend about local salaries," wrote Doherty, of Silver Spring, Md. "If NPR can afford to pay that kind of salary to on-air talent, then surely you can share some of your riches with local NPR affiliates. They don't need my $50. I wonder how much Mr. Simon donates to HIS local public radio station, which is also WAMU."

So I asked Simon. Does he give to WAMU?

"I don't mind saying--in fact, I'm proud of saying--that my wife and I belong to: WBEZ, WAMU, WNYC, KCRW, KPCC, and KCPW," said Simon. "I also, in the course of a year, usually join any local public station at which I make an appearance, and I make something like 20 a year (so soon I will re-join OPB, KPLW, GPB, etc.)

And as for his salary, here's what Simon has to say:

"I am grateful for the salary that I earn and feel that it is merited by the popularity of our program, the audience our show generates, the number of interviews, essays, and reported pieces that I do, and whatever value I have to NPR that may contribute to our relationship with the public," said Simon, who joined NPR in 1977.

"There are a few other people in public radio who earn more, both at weekly and daily programs," he continued. "Most everybody in commercial broadcasting earns a lot more. I try to be worth of my salary each and every week, as well as the trust of the audience. I am grateful to each and every person who contributes to public radio and has helped make possible the really blessed professional life that I have been able to enjoy and, I hope, share with millions of listeners."

Readers might be interested in this piece in the Columbia Journalism Review that notes CBS anchor Katie Couric is paid the equivalent of what it costs to produce two NPR shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Adding this at 3:45 p.m, which was posted today: NPR CEO Vivian Schiller takes a pay cut:

MORE ON SIMON
Some listeners were disturbed by Simon's interview on Sept. 5 with novelist Lorrie Moore about her new book, "A Gate at the Stairs." In the interview, Moore read a section in her book where a character fantacizes about driving a steak knife through former Bush operative Karl Rove. After that she and Simon laughed.

Simon was laughing most directly at the absurdity of her punclhine, in a fictional story, but still he shouldn't have laughed. And he knows that. He apologized to listeners on Sept. 19. Here's a clip of the apology:

He also posted an apology under the comments section of the original interview.

Here's Simon's comment posted on Sept. 7:

"If I thought for a moment that Lorrie Moore was making a serious appeal to harm anyone, I would have made that the center of the interview. She was writing a passage satirizing overheard conversation in a small, smug, mostly liberal college town. The remark about Karl Rove--and the instantaneous admission that it was wrong--are part of that satire. I'm sure Ms. Moore has her own political convictions. But people should not infer what they think they are from an isolated satirical passage in a novel. In any case, I doubt they would include physically harming anybody in any case. The irony (hope I'm using the word correctly) here is that liberals should be touchier about this section than conservatives--it satirizes the kind of person who say they oppose war, but seem to countenance verbal violence."

From the transcript:
Ms. MOORE: Is this Sarah Vaughn on the stereo? Sure is. Man, listen to her scat. (Soundbite of music) And you say you don't believe in such a thing as black culture? I don't. Ever heard Julie Andrews scat? I don't believe in gay culture or white culture or female culture or any of that. It's just so dream world, baby. Ever heard Julie Andrews at all? Hey, you don't need blue eyes if you've got blue earrings.

I didn't know what they were talking about most of the time, but sometimes in recalling certain remarks, the context would clarify them. Certain phrases like a dusting of sand would float across my mind and heap to a sort of glass. I'd seen scat, and now here it was as an admirable thing.

Vaughn takes autumn leaves and turns it into "Finnegan's Wake." Is that your argument? Yeah, kind of an Irish one over beer. I'm drinking beer. When we were in France, the French customs officials looked at us in a bewildered way. But look, they said, as if they were pointing out something we'd failed to notice. You are white and your son is black; how can this be? As if it defied science or as if we had never regarded our own skin color before. And I had to say in English and in anger: This is what an American family looks like.

The rest of the world doesn't understand the ungovernable diversity of this country - diversity made even more extreme by capitalism and by Karl Rove. I was once in a restaurant and saw Karl Rove sitting across the room and for five minutes I thought: I could take this steak knife and walk over there and change history right now. And, well, as you can see, I chose to stay a free woman. Would anyone care for a timbale?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Continue reading "Scott Simon's Salary and Steak Knives" >

On Sept. 10, two now-infamous videos of ACORN employees giving a faux prostitute and pimp advice on tax breaks and home loans for a business involving underage El Salvadoran girls were posted at biggovernment.com.

The website, launched that day, was the brainchild of Andrew Breibart, a conservative who helped make the Drudge Report famous. Breibart advised the two posing conservative activists that the mainstream media would never believe their damning videos.

He was right.

The conservative-leaning Fox News broke the story that day, but the rest of mainstream media, including NPR, was slow to respond. There may be a good reason.

"Why has NPR totally ignored an important story about illegal activities with this organization, ACORN?" asked Marilu Orozco-Peterson, of Ft. Collins, CO on Sept. 16. "Maybe America should vote to stop funding for NPR if you have such a radical political agenda and don't relate important information that may embarrass a liberal president."

NPR hasn't ignored the videos story, which ultimately damaged ACORN, a community organizing group that's been around since the 1970s helping low-income people. Last week, Congress voted to deny federal funds for ACORN.

Four days after the videos appeared on Fox, NPR first mentioned the video story on its blog, The Two Way at 7:39 pm. The posting was extensive and gave the views of ACORN and its critics but, overall, seemed primarily to ask why conservatives are so focused on this one group.

On Sept. 15, NPR's Pam Fessler, who covers poverty and philanthropy, conducted a "two-way" interview about the ACORN videos on All Things Considered with host Melissa Block.

"This is very much a story of accumulation," Fessler told me. "The first two videotapes were of interest, but did not necessarily warrant a piece by us initially, considering all the other things going on in the world that we need to cover."

Fessler said the story took on more importance after the Census Bureau cut ACORN's funding on Sept. 11 and the Senate voted to cut housing funding on Sept. 14. "When that happened, we did in fact report on the issue," said Fessler.

The Two Way did two more postings on the story on Sept. 16. Talk of the Nation discussed ACORN that same day.

Fessler did a second report for Morning Edition on Sept. 17 -- a week after the videos appeared online -- about how ACORN was dealing with fallout from the videos.

"Hindsight is 20/20 and it's always better to be out in front of a story than behind it," said Steven Drummond, NPR national editor. "But the idea that we were intentionally late, that's ridiculous. No one likes to play catch up. At the end of the weekend, it was clear this was a story that moved beyond being an Internet prank to raise broader, serious concerns."

While the videos are certainly riveting, in the age of Internet hoaxes it was critical for NPR's credibility to verify that the videos were real.

"There are many, many aspects to this story -- large number of them political," noted Fessler, who joined NPR in 1993. "I think it's important that we not rush on air things that need to be checked out. Those videotapes could have been completely phony, and initially ACORN did charge that they were doctored."

Christopher Martin, a journalism professor at University of Northern Iowa, points out that the mainstream media needed initially to be wary of the videos.

The videos were posted on a conservative website (same would be true if videos were posted on a liberal website). Videographer James O'Keefe was not well-known at the time the videos emerged, nor were his motives in what amounted to a private sting operation against ACORN. Also, the videos were edited, so there was no way of knowing what, if anything had been excluded.

"Who knows what journalistic standards went into creating this?" said Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times on CNN.

Initially, for example, O'Keefe, 25, did not publicize that he and his actress partner, Hannah Giles, 20, were thrown out of ACORN's Philadelphia office, which also called the police. That said, O'Keefe did capture ACORN employees in Baltimore, Brooklyn and Washington, DC on camera trying to help the pair with their supposed plans to carry out illegal activities.

It was clear the videos were real before Fessler's first report aired the evening of Sept. 15.

But according to a research study released Wednesday on press coverage of ACORN, NPR and others in the mainstream media had reason to be cautious. The report outlines -- using empirical data compiled by academic researchers -- how successful the right has been in going after ACORN.

"What we found is there had been a concerted campaign for several years against ACORN by conservative media and some Republican politicians and it came to a head in October 2008 as a campaign issue," said Martin, the Iowa journalism professor who co-authored the study "Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN was in the News and What the News Got Wrong." Martin's co-author was Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College. Neither is connected to ACORN nor did they take outside funding.

The study notes the Republican National Committee in May 2009 launched a website, stopacorn.gop.com, targeting the group.

The study evaluated 647 stories about ACORN by 15 major news organizations, including NPR. The data portion of the study looked at stories from 2007-2008, but the analysis included ACORN news developments through August. More than half (55 percent) of the 647 stories included allegations of "voter fraud" by ACORN.

Martin said the media did a terrible job of fact-checking allegations against ACORN.

Most of the news media coverage about ACORN was one-sided and repeated conservative and Republican criticisms of the group, said the study, "without seeking to verify them or provide ACORN or its supporters with a reasonable opportunity to respond to allegations."

A common mistake in the mainstream media, the study said, was to confuse voter registration fraud with voter fraud. Registration fraud involves collecting names of people who aren't eligible to vote. An example of voter fraud would be helping people vote more than once.

ACORN is being investigated for voter registration fraud, but there is no evidence of voter fraud, a far more serious charge.

"The mainstream media rarely acknowledged that those two things were different," said Martin. "They tended to use voter fraud when meaning voter registration fraud, so those issues were confused."

NPR did well in the study. "NPR spent a lot of time on the voter fraud story, sometimes providing important background on the story's history," said the study.

"We meant that NPR, more than any other news organization we studied, had a higher percentage of its stories covering the theme or narrative of ACORN's voter registration work," said Martin. "That is, not talking about it in terms of voter fraud allegations, but in terms of work ACORN does in assisting in the registration of voters."

The study's message is that journalists were too quick to buy conservative condemnations of ACORN without checking facts. News reports also rarely gave ACORN credit for its successes during the last four decades helping low-income people register to vote and get higher minimum wages and better housing. (Martin believes conservatives are anti-ACORN because the group helps low-income people and minorities who are not likely to vote Republican.)

The conservative media's campaign against ACORN, as documented by Martin, may well be one reason why the mainstream media was slow to pick up or trust biggovernment.com's story.

Even if Martin's study correctly documents an effort to discredit ACORN with the help of unquestioning journalists, that doesn't mean that the news media should automatically disregard claims made by interest groups with conservative (or any) agendas.

This issue should remind journalists that claims from any interest group should be checked out and then reported -- if proven to be credible. Obviously, not every group or claim deserves scrutiny, but the ACORN situation certainly meets the test of an issue of public importance.

ACORN may or may not deserve all the criticism heaped on it. But in this case, ACORN deserved intense -- not halting -- scrutiny from any reputable media organization. The same is true for the groups that have raised allegations against ACORN. Allegations need to be checked out -- not just repeated.

For all ACORN stories on NPR, click here.

Continue reading "The ACORN Videos: Did NPR Ignore Them?" >

When a Yale University lab technician was questioned in the death of a graduate student Wednesday morning, the specter of two men was very much on the minds of NPR editors.

One was Richard Jewell. The other was Dr. Steven J. Hatfill.

Jewell was a security guard who became the focus of an FBI investigation into the bombing at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park in 1996 that killed one woman and injured 111.

Hatfill was a former government scientist whose name was leaked to the press in 2002 as someone connected to the anthrax mailings in 2001 that killed five people.

Neither man was ever arrested or charged with a crime.

But the media made their lives miserable after law enforcement sources anonymously named each man a "person of interest" in the high-profile cases.

So it's understandable that NPR editors were cautious when an Associated Press story was fed to NPR early on Sept. 16. The story said that Raymond Clark III was a "person of interest" in the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le. Clark, 24, an animal research technician, at that point had not been charged with a crime and had been released from New Haven police custody.

"Clark has been described as a person of interest, not a suspect, in Le's death," read an AP story posted on npr.org at 10:32 a.m. "New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said police were hoping to compare DNA taken from Clark's hair, fingernails and saliva to more than 150 pieces of evidence collected from the crime scene."

Randy Lilleston, a supervising editor for NPR digital, was the first editor to spot the AP story. The question became: should NPR use Clark's name even though news organizations commonly identify someone associated with a crime only if they are arrested or charged?

"The answer clearly was yes it was appropriate to identify him because the police chief had openly and publicly identified him," said Lilleston, "and because in my opinion it was very newsworthy." In the Hatfill and Jewell cases, information was leaked to the media by unnamed sources. By contrast, Clark's name was announced at a well-attended press conference with the police chief.

Mark Memmott, who blogs on NPR's The Two-Way, posted an item at 8:45 a.m. about Clark's release. After that, a discussion ensued among NPR editors about the appropriateness of using Clark's name.

"Richard Jewell was very much in my mind," said Stuart Seidel, deputy managing editor. Seidel sent an email to all news staff at 12:19 p.m. explaining that NPR would continue to use Clark's name, but anyone reporting on the story must mention that Clark had not been charged and was released after questioning.

Are those caveats enough? In this case, it's now a moot point. Clark was arrested for Le's murder Thursday.

Even so, the question remains whether the press should publicize the name of a "person of interest." In this case, the police chief's televised press conference was pretty close to an arrest and could hardly be ignored. But in general, I'd say not. The potential damage to someone's life is so great, as is the margin for error when police are under intense pressure to come up with suspects in high-profile cases. Jewell said the media went after him "like piranha on a bleeding cow."

Both Jewell and Hatfill won generous financial compensation for the pain and disruption they endured. But it's unlikely the money compensated for the loss of the lives they led before each became a "person of interest."

''There are parts of the old Richard that aren't there anymore,'' Jewell told The New York Times in 1997. ''Who's going to give me back my old life? Who's going to give me back the trust, the trust that I used to have in people?'' Jewell died in 2007 at 44.

But there's another twist to Clark's case that is likely to come up repeatedly. Because the AP is fed automatically to NPR's news website, Clark's name appeared on npr.org -- though not on the homepage-- before NPR editors even had a chance to talk about whether to use it. The AP autofeed appears under NPR's News section on the right under AP Latest Headlines.

However, before the Clark story got more prominent play on NPR's homepage or The Two-Way, editor Lilleston had both seen and approved it.

"The automated feed of AP copy is not especially prominent on NPR.org," said Mark Stencel, NPR's managing editor digital news. "That said, we, like many news organizations that use those feeds on their sites, are somewhat -- but not entirely -- at the mercy of AP's editorial decisions. Like many of those same news organizations, we signal our own editorial thinking with the prominence and emphasis we give those reports. There are times we will post wire stories only after NPR has independently confirmed the details."

Autofeeds certainly increase the possibility of something being published that NPR might not be prepared to publish.

Just ask the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It had decided to not run the controversial AP photo of a dying Marine. But the AP slide show wound up on the Plain Dealer's website as part of an automatic feed. Only hours later did someone from the paper realize the mistake.

The same thing happened for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Houston Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press.

The lesson to be learned here? If a news organization wants to have its own editorial standards, even in this era of Internet publishing, it will have to be eagle-eyed about everything posted on its website -- and will have to make sure that everyone on the staff understands what those standards are.

(In October 1996, I wrote about the media frenzy surrounding theJewell case for American Journalism Review.)

Republishing this because due to a technical glitch it was not sent out via email. I am in Monterrey and San Francisco visiting public radio stations KAZU and KQED respectively, and will return to the office on Wednesday and do a posting then.

On the Media looked at this issue this week and found that some Marines were not upset about the media running this photo.

SANTIAGO LYON, AP Director of Photography: Well, for me it's interesting that the Marines on the ground in Afghanistan, from the commanding general of that particular battalion down to the company commander, have told us that they really don't have a problem with what we did, that they understand that it's our job to photograph and capture reality and that we did our job. They really don't seem that concerned about it. And this is coming from the men on the ground actually fighting the war.

Take a listen.
ACS.

John and Sharon Bernard's only son, Joshua, 21, was wounded on Aug. 14 when a rocket-propelled grenade blew off one of his legs and severely injured the other during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

"His comrades struggled with tourniquets and battlefield first aid while still under heavy enemy fire, but sadly, for this young, mortally wounded Marine, this attack would mean the end of his life a short time later," wrote Jim Bennett on his blog, the bloviating hammerhead.

Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who was embedded with Bernard's Marine unit, shot the scene from a respectful distance, as military guidelines require. Embedded photographers are only allowed to shoot from a distance and may not show the facial features of the person who has been killed or wounded.

Jacobson captured the gruesome death of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, a young man from New Portland, Maine, whose parents had home-schooled him and who taught Bible studies to fellow Marines in his Afghanistan unit. He loved literature, was an avid hiker, an Iraqi war veteran and hoped to become a U.S. marshall.

The picture conveys the loss to the Bernards, to their son's unit and to the rest of the United States as well as graphically depicting the cost of war beyond the lives and billions of dollars already spent. The question becomes what to do with this photograph. Should it be published?

We hear on the news of soldiers -- or civilians -- dying in Afghanistan or Iraq almost daily. Most of us have become inured. Those killed are statistics. But the photo of Bernard lying on the ground, covered in blood, shortly before dying reminds us that real people -- sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters -- are dying.

As a journalist, I say, publish the photo. As the mother of a 22-year-old, I would want the world to know what my son sacrificed for his country. But Joshua Bernard's parents don't share those sentiments.

They adamantly did not want the AP to distribute the photo to its newspaper, broadcast and online clients. They had the chance to make their feelings known because the AP, showing remarkable sensitivity, shared the photos with the family a few days after the Aug. 24 funeral.

Bennett, of the bloviating hammerhead was outraged at AP's decision and interviewed John Bernard, a career Marine.

Bernard said he handed the photos back to the AP reporter, adding: "Look, neither my wife nor daughter needs to see this. Nobody needs to see this. So if you're asking me for my permission, you don't have it. You need to go back and tell them that absolutely no one needs to see this. It doesn't honor him. It doesn't honor the Corps. It doesn't honor God. It doesn't honor this country, and it doesn't do them (AP), as a news agency, any service whatsoever."

Four days later, Bernard called AP again asking them to spare his family more pain. Last Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked AP to hold back the pictures.

After much discussion and thought, the AP decided to release the photos. Last Thursday, it sent them with an embargo so that editors across the nation would have time to reflect within their own newsrooms on whether to run the disturbing images. Read the AP's statement.

"I have very little use for the people who took the picture and even less for those who ran it," Bernard told Bennett. "They had plenty of time to reflect on it, and they did it anyway."

When NPR received the AP photos, four editors discussed whether to publish them on the website. They decided to run two on NPR's news blog, The Two-Way. In a posting on Sept. 4 at 5:26 p.m., Frank James wrote a short story.

The photos were put behind a screen warning viewers that if they clicked on it, they might find the images unsettling. The decision to look at the photos was then, up to the individual.

It's important to note that NPR did not blithely post the photos, but gave a lot of thought to the decision, and James explained the reasoning in his post. In such situations, it's critical that news organizations explain their decision-making. NPR also linked to the AP story about Bernard.

"After talking it over, I felt that the picture was a legitimate, albeit grim, image that was part of the overall story of the Afghan war we have tried to tell since the beginning and have done with considerable care and thoroughness," said NPR senior vice president for news, Ellen Weiss. "The embedding of journalists should reflect not just the story of military or policy successes but has to tell the stories of sacrifices and loss."

NPR also included in The Two-Way a discussion about the AP decision to send the photos out to news organizations.

"Often when discussing tough calls like this one, we try to see that no harm is done to the parties involved. Or that if harm does occur, we minimize it as best we can," said Keith Jenkins, who runs NPR's multimedia department. "I felt that AP tried to do that when they met with the family in advance of releasing the photo. We tried to do that by providing context through Frank James' blog post and by giving our viewers the ability to opt out of viewing the image, as well as to see other photos of Lance. Cpl. Bernard and his unit as they honored him in a memorial service."

In an ideal world, I'd advocate that NPR not go against the family's wishes, especially since they were so clear. I'd say to look for alternatives. With hundreds of soldiers dying, is this the only photo of dying soldier?

But the reality is that images of U.S soldiers killed in combat have not been widely disseminated because it's unusual for photographers to witness the deaths, and because of military restrictions. Only recently have journalists been allowed to photograph coffins as they are unloaded from military airplanes.

"Going back to the beginning of the Iraq War, we have seen very, very few of these photos," said Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher (a newspaper trade publication) and author of "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq."

Mitchell appeared Tuesday on a Talk of the Nation segment on this topic.

"And that's why whenever there is a photo of this type, it's very controversial because we've hardly ever seen them," Mitchell said. "And many people feel that the war has been sanitized and that no one could really accuse the news media -- whatever you think of this particular incident -- no one could possibly accuse the new media of showing so many of these images over the years. There have been very, very few exceptions in this. And so, (the media have) demonstrated incredible restraint. Some people feel too much restraint."

War is messy, painful, expensive and confusing. We need to be told regularly of the sacrifices made by the soldiers and civilians who are suffer in all wars. I'm sorry that the Bernards had to pay a price -- twice -- to remind the rest of us what is too easy to forget as we go about our lives tuning out the news of yet another military death.

It may be a small consolation, but many of us now know much more about Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard -- and the ultimate sacrifice he made on behalf of you and me.

Here is the AP narrated slide show that tells of Bernard's last day, including the controversial photo--with a warning.

John and Sharon Bernard's only son, Joshua, 21, was wounded on Aug. 14 when a rocket-propelled grenade blew off one of his legs and severely injured the other during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

"His comrades struggled with tourniquets and battlefield first aid while still under heavy enemy fire, but sadly, for this young, mortally wounded Marine, this attack would mean the end of his life a short time later," wrote Jim Bennett on his blog, the bloviating hammerhead.

Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who was embedded with Bernard's Marine unit, shot the scene from a respectful distance, as military guidelines require. Embedded photographers are only allowed to shoot from a distance and may not show the facial features of the person who has been killed or wounded.

Jacobson captured the gruesome death of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, a young man from New Portland, Maine, whose parents had home-schooled him and who taught Bible studies to fellow Marines in his Afghanistan unit. He loved literature, was an avid hiker, an Iraqi war veteran and hoped to become a U.S. marshall.

The picture conveys the loss to the Bernards, to their son's unit and to the rest of the United States as well as graphically depicting the cost of war beyond the lives and billions of dollars already spent. The question becomes what to do with this photograph. Should it be published?

We hear on the news of soldiers -- or civilians -- dying in Afghanistan or Iraq almost daily. Most of us have become inured. Those killed are statistics. But the photo of Bernard lying on the ground, covered in blood, shortly before dying reminds us that real people -- sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters -- are dying.

As a journalist, I say, publish the photo. As the mother of a 22-year-old, I would want the world to know what my son sacrificed for his country. But Joshua Bernard's parents don't share those sentiments.

They adamantly did not want the AP to distribute the photo to its newspaper, broadcast and online clients. They had the chance to make their feelings known because the AP, showing remarkable sensitivity, shared the photos with the family a few days after the Aug. 24 funeral.

Bennett, of the bloviating hammerhead was outraged at AP's decision and interviewed John Bernard, a career Marine.

Bernard said he handed the photos back to the AP reporter, adding: "Look, neither my wife nor daughter needs to see this. Nobody needs to see this. So if you're asking me for my permission, you don't have it. You need to go back and tell them that absolutely no one needs to see this. It doesn't honor him. It doesn't honor the Corps. It doesn't honor God. It doesn't honor this country, and it doesn't do them (AP), as a news agency, any service whatsoever."

Four days later, Bernard called AP again asking them to spare his family more pain. Last Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked AP to hold back the pictures.

After much discussion and thought, the AP decided to release the photos. Last Thursday, it sent them with an embargo so that editors across the nation would have time to reflect within their own newsrooms on whether to run the disturbing images. Read the AP's statement.

"I have very little use for the people who took the picture and even less for those who ran it," Bernard told Bennett. "They had plenty of time to reflect on it, and they did it anyway."

When NPR received the AP photos, four editors discussed whether to publish them on the website. They decided to run two on NPR's news blog, The Two-Way. In a posting on Sept. 4 at 5:26 p.m., Frank James wrote a short story.

The photos were put behind a screen warning viewers that if they clicked on it, they might find the images unsettling. The decision to look at the photos was then, up to the individual.

It's important to note that NPR did not blithely post the photos, but gave a lot of thought to the decision, and James explained the reasoning in his post. In such situations, it's critical that news organizations explain their decision-making. NPR also linked to the AP story about Bernard.

"After talking it over, I felt that the picture was a legitimate, albeit grim, image that was part of the overall story of the Afghan war we have tried to tell since the beginning and have done with considerable care and thoroughness," said NPR senior vice president for news, Ellen Weiss. "The embedding of journalists should reflect not just the story of military or policy successes but has to tell the stories of sacrifices and loss."

NPR also included in The Two-Way a discussion about the AP decision to send the photos out to news organizations.

"Often when discussing tough calls like this one, we try to see that no harm is done to the parties involved. Or that if harm does occur, we minimize it as best we can," said Keith Jenkins, who runs NPR's multimedia department. "I felt that AP tried to do that when they met with the family in advance of releasing the photo. We tried to do that by providing context through Frank James' blog post and by giving our viewers the ability to opt out of viewing the image, as well as to see other photos of Lance. Cpl. Bernard and his unit as they honored him in a memorial service."

In an ideal world, I'd advocate that NPR not go against the family's wishes, especially since they were so clear. I'd say to look for alternatives. With hundreds of soldiers dying, is this the only photo of dying soldier?

But the reality is that images of U.S soldiers killed in combat have not been widely disseminated because it's unusual for photographers to witness the deaths, and because of military restrictions. Only recently have journalists been allowed to photograph coffins as they are unloaded from military airplanes.

"Going back to the beginning of the Iraq War, we have seen very, very few of these photos," said Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher (a newspaper trade publication) and author of "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq."

Mitchell appeared Tuesday on a Talk of the Nation segment on this topic.

"And that's why whenever there is a photo of this type, it's very controversial because we've hardly ever seen them," Mitchell said. "And many people feel that the war has been sanitized and that no one could really accuse the news media -- whatever you think of this particular incident -- no one could possibly accuse the new media of showing so many of these images over the years. There have been very, very few exceptions in this. And so, (the media have) demonstrated incredible restraint. Some people feel too much restraint."

War is messy, painful, expensive and confusing. We need to be told regularly of the sacrifices made by the soldiers and civilians who are suffer in all wars. I'm sorry that the Bernards had to pay a price -- twice -- to remind the rest of us what is too easy to forget as we go about our lives tuning out the news of yet another military death.

It may be a small consolation, but many of us now know much more about Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard -- and the ultimate sacrifice he made on behalf of you and me.

Here is the AP narrated slide show that tells of Bernard's last day, including the controversial photo--with a warning.

There was no doubt that Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had died if anyone listened to NPR in the days after his death late on Aug. 25 from brain cancer. Between Aug. 26 and 30, NPR ran 53 stories.

Before Kennedy even died, NPR had 7 in-depth stories already prepared, according to David Sweeney, NPR's managing editor. "From shortly after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, we worked up a list of stories both for the air and online," said Sweeney. "We also worked to produce a couple of obits that would reflect his life, in all its aspects."

Media saturation on the Kennedy story was not unique to NPR. A report released Tuesday by the Project on Excellence in Journalism noted that Kennedy's death was the No.1 story last week. "Indeed, his passing generated more coverage than that of any other political or celebrity since the PEJ News Coverage Index began in January 2007," said the report.

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, Morning Edition ran 6 stories on Kennedy -- covering 34 minutes. To put that in perspective, Morning Edition produces 1 hour and 14-minutes of editorial content each day after newscasts, breaks and funders are taken out.

Tell Me More devoted 19 minutes to Kennedy. Talk of the Nation devoted 48 minutes to an NPR special on remembering Kennedy. By late that afternoon, half the stories (45 minutes) on All Things Considered related to Kennedy's passing. Total programming time across two hours of ATC, excluding newscasts, breaks, funders, is approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes.

NPR also pulled together an hour-long special that went out to stations Wednesday evening. And that's just on-air coverage. More was written on npr.org.

But on that first day, in the 23 on-air stories, only one mentioned the name Mary Jo Kopechne and 5 mentioned Chappaquiddick.

Kopechne was the young woman who Kennedy left to drown on July 18,1969 after the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Kopechne, a former campaign worker, was in the water for eight or nine hours before Kennedy reported the accident to the police. While Kennedy was deemed responsible for the drowning death, he never served time in jail. (See 1988 New York Times investigation exploring what happened at Chappaquiddick.)

NPR's Brian Naylor did tell the Chappaquiddick story during a 9-minute obit for Morning Edition. But the focus was on how Chappaquiddick and the death of Kopechne derailed Kennedy's presidential ambitions.

"An effort to draft the youngest Kennedy for the White House was short lived at the Democratic convention of 1968, and his presidential aspirations were dealt a blow a year later when in July of 1969, his car went off a small bridge on the Massachusetts island of Chappaquiddick," said Naylor. "Kennedy swam to safety, leaving behind the young woman who was a passenger in his car. The woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker, drowned. Kennedy later called his actions indefensible. He was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident, but his sentence was suspended and he remained popular in Massachusetts, where he was reelected to the Senate the next year."

Some listeners were unhappy with what they perceive as hagiography while downplaying the darker chapters in Kennedy's life.

"In your story on Ted Kennedy your reports vacillate between naming the young woman in the Chappaquiddick accident and just calling her a 'young campaign aid.'" She had a name and her name should always be used," wrote Laurel Barton, of Seattle. "It was Mary Jo Kopechne. It is disrespectful and degrading to refer to her as just a 'young campaign aid.'"

Michael Whitaker of Beaufort, SC added, "I work at a chemical plant in Savannah and mention of Ted Kennedy's passing brought up nothing but negative comments, particularly about his murder of Mary Jo Kopechne and how he was able to cover it up. I'd like to hear more from her family."

More complete coverage of Kennedy's foibles appeared on Talk of the Nation on Aug. 26. The now-famous island was mentioned 10 times in a 48-minute segment that more fully explored what happened at Chappaquiddick.

"Chappaquiddick was mentioned in stories where appropriate and we made a consistent effort to reflect in show two-ways and subsequent pieces the flaws and failings in the Senator's life and career," said Sweeney.

Kennedy may have been a great legislator. He may have been a wonderful uncle, a terrific father, a faithful friend and rejoiced in his second marriage, but there were warts too. He got kicked out of Harvard for cheating. He was known in his younger years for womanizing and drinking too much. In 1991, he was carousing with his son, Patrick and nephew, William Kennedy Smith in Palm Beach. Later that night, a woman accused Smith of raping her. Smith was tried and later acquitted.

Not everyone loved Teddy Kennedy. He was a complex man with a family history that defies belief when all the tragedies are strung together. To accurately portray any man or woman, it is just as important to fully include what is unpleasant or unflattering -- especially since those events for Kennedy went a long way toward shaping who Teddy Kennedy was when he died.

I wanted to respond to Eric Newton's post asking about the business decision to stop charging for transcripts. I thought I would share this blog posting. I have been on vacation, furlough, and am now out in San Diego visiting KPBS.

Eric Newton wrote this post about the transcripts on Aug. 21.
As much as we appreciate the journalism... wouldn't this business story be just a little more helpful with a few actual numbers? Such as... how many people used to use the pay service? ... at $3.95 each, how much did that bring in each year? ... how much did the translation cost NPR each year? ... how much, thus, was NPR losing each year (presuming in the absence of numbers that it was a losing proposition) ... given the debates between content being behind "pay walls" ... what is the lesson here? is it that few will pay for a transcript when the audio is free? Hard to derive meaning from a business story with no numbers... appreciate the public service of releasing the transcripts for free, simply want to know more facts.

NPR's response:
Why NPR.org Scrapped The Fees And Made Transcripts Free

By Bruce Melzer
Director, Digital Media Business Development
August 24, 2009
One of the biggest changes we made with the launch of the new NPR.org was offering free transcripts on the site. Ever since NPR started transcribing its radio programs in 1990, we have been selling transcripts to help defray the costs of producing them. In the old days, we used to mail out copies of the transcripts, a time-consuming and expensive process for all involved. In 2002 we added e-commerce to the transcript operation and were able to drop the prices and deliver the transcripts via email.

Why did we give up this revenue stream? First and foremost, the users expect to be able to come to our site and read the story they heard on the air. As rich as the radio stories are, reading is faster than listening, our users told us. Although we were writing Web versions of many radio stories, a number of stories still didn't have much text. Making transcripts free solved that.

A second reason is accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. Although NPR has always had a policy of providing free transcripts to these users, we eliminated the need for them to contact us for transcript copies.

There are solid business reasons for making transcripts free. Sales have been dropping over the years. As people search for, discover and share content, offering free transcripts will boost the traffic to NPR.org, traffic that can be monetized with sponsorship. Finally, search engines like text. Many of our stories could not be found by the search engines because they did not have enough text. Now it will be easier for the search engines -- and ultimately the users -- to find and enjoy NPR's stories.

(ACS: Eric asked about the costs and I was told that NPR does not release detailed budget lines to the public about individual product lines.)

POST LAST WEEK
Transcripts of favorite, missed or maddening stories on NPR used to cost $3.95 each, but now they are free on NPR.org.

Previously, NPR charged for transcripts because an outside contractor worked fast to prepare them to be available to the library within a few hours of a piece airing. It was a costly expense which NPR did for the benefit of classrooms and deaf audiences, or anyone who wrote to Listener Services and was willing to pay.

As of the new NPR.org site re-launch on July 27, over 20,000 visitors had gone online to get transcripts.

Now, all you have to do to get a story's text is visit www.NPR.org and click on the transcript link to the right of the audio button, located just below the story's title.

Quotes from these transcripts are for non-commercial use only, and may not be used in any other media without attribution to NPR.

Why now?

"Transcripts were once largely the province of librarians and other specialists whose job was to find archival content, often for professional purposes," said Kinsey Wilson, the Senior VP of NPR's Digital Media department. "As Web content becomes easier to share and distribute, and search and social media have become important drivers of audience engagement, archival content -- whether in the form of stories or transcripts -- has an entirely different value than it did in the past."

NPR took the new website launch as an opportunity to offer free transcripts, according to Laura Soto-Barra, NPR's Senior Librarian.

"We made a decision to go ahead even though NPR pays a considerable amount of money to produce transcripts on deadline," said Soto-Barra. "Transcripts are posted six hours after the shows air, except for Morning Edition's transcripts which are posted four hours after the show is broadcast. We have offered free audio for a long time and we felt that free transcripts were long overdue."

New software allows NPR's staff to receive daily metrics and supply data for "most popular transcripts yesterday", most popular transcripts for the last seven days" and "most popular transcript ever".

Keep in mind transcript coordinators do their best to catch and correct errors on the text. But since there is a quick turn-around time on transcripts, mistakes can occur. If you notice a spelling or typographical error, please email Transcripts@npr.org, where it can be corrected.
Soto-Barra said that NPR transcripts may contain minor or significant errors, ranging from the use of "ex-patriot" instead of "expatriate."

In another example, a transcriber mistakenly quoted filmmaker John Waters as saying of former Manson follower Leslie Van Houten: "She's a yuppie," when what he really said was, "She's not a yuppie."

Transcript coordinators "Dorothy Hickson and Laura Jeffrey do their best to find and correct errors but unfortunately, they cannot proofread every piece," said Soto-Barra. "Librarians and transcript coordinators appreciate when someone calls their attention to errors, particularly when they involve name spellings and use of (unintelligible)."

Transcripts of favorite, missed or maddening stories on NPR used to cost $3.95 each, but now they are free on NPR.org.

Previously, NPR charged for transcripts because an outside contractor worked fast to prepare them to be available to the library within a few hours of a piece airing. It was a costly expense which NPR did for the benefit of classrooms and deaf audiences, or anyone who wrote to Listener Services and was willing to pay.

As of the new NPR.org site re-launch on July 27, over 20,000 visitors had gone online to get transcripts.

Now, all you have to do to get a story's text is visit www.NPR.org and click on the transcript link to the right of the audio button, located just below the story's title.

Quotes from these transcripts are for non-commercial use only, and may not be used in any other media without attribution to NPR.

Why now?

"Transcripts were once largely the province of librarians and other specialists whose job was to find archival content, often for professional purposes," said Kinsey Wilson, the Senior VP of NPR's Digital Media department. "As Web content becomes easier to share and distribute, and search and social media have become important drivers of audience engagement, archival content -- whether in the form of stories or transcripts -- has an entirely different value than it did in the past."

NPR took the new website launch as an opportunity to offer free transcripts, according to Laura Soto-Barra, NPR's Senior Librarian.

"We made a decision to go ahead even though NPR pays a considerable amount of money to produce transcripts on deadline," said Soto-Barra. "Transcripts are posted six hours after the shows air, except for Morning Edition's transcripts which are posted four hours after the show is broadcast. We have offered free audio for a long time and we felt that free transcripts were long overdue."

New software allows NPR's staff to receive daily metrics and supply data for "most popular transcripts yesterday", most popular transcripts for the last seven days" and "most popular transcript ever".

Keep in mind transcript coordinators do their best to catch and correct errors on the text. But since there is a quick turn-around time on transcripts, mistakes can occur. If you notice a spelling or typographical error, please email Transcripts@npr.org, where it can be corrected.
Soto-Barra said that NPR transcripts may contain minor or significant errors, ranging from the use of "ex-patriot" instead of "expatriate." In another example, a transcriber mistakenly quoted filmmaker John Waters as saying of former Manson follower Leslie Van Houten: "She's a yuppie," when what he really said was, "She's not a yuppie."

Transcript coordinators "Dorothy Hickson and Laura Jeffrey do their best to find and correct errors but unfortunately, they cannot proofread every piece," said Soto-Barra. "Librarians and transcript coordinators appreciate when someone calls their attention to errors, particularly when they involve name spellings and use of (unintelligible)."

The emails and calls keep arriving. They want to correct NPR. The newly confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor will not be the first Hispanic Supreme Court judge.

That honor, they say, should go to Benjamin Cardozo who joined the court in 1932.

"Your show, and many others, keep referring to Sotomayor as the 'first Hispanic and the third woman' to serve on the Supreme Court," wrote Gedalia Snow Rowe of Washington, NC. "I believe Benjamin Cardozo was the first Hispanic to hold that honor."

Even before Sotomayor was nominated for the highest court on May 26, NPR began discussing whether Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic and concluded she was. Cardozo had some Portuguese ancestors but his family was Sephardic Jewish and he was regarded as a Jewish appointee in 1932, according to NPR Washington editor, Ron Elving. In fact, the term "Hispanic" wasn't even used in the 1930s.

Please listen to this 50-second piece that appeared on All Things Considered on May 26.

Talk of the Nation brought Andrew Kaufman on the air to deal with this question. Kaufman, a Harvard law professor, is author of a 1998 book, Cardozo, considered a definitive biography of the justice.

Here's what Kaufman had to say:

NEAL CONAN: Well, Justice Cardozo took his seat on the High Court in 1932. He was a descendant of Sephardic Jews who emigrated to the United States from England and Holland, but his biographer Andrew Kaufman told us it's complicated.

Mr. ANDREW KAUFMAN (Author, "Cardozo"): The family's legend is that the Cardozos came originally from Portugal. But there is no firm documentation about the particulars, although the name Cardozo is a fairly common name in Portugal and Brazil even today. Many Spanish and - would deny that Portuguese are Hispanic. Many Jews do not regard themselves as ethnically part of the European country they came from."

Kaufman continued, "Many Sephardic Jews, however, do regard themselves as ethnically Spanish and Portuguese. But so far as I know, whether one was Hispanic was not an issue for Cardozo in his day. I don't remember ever having run across the term in contemporary relevant writing.

For more information, check out what Factcheck.org has to say.

By many measures, the Cash for Clunkers is a wildly successful government program. It is a stimulus plan at work. People are buying cars and trying to reduce carbon emissions.

Yes, the program has had a few hiccups but only because it is more successful than anyone envisioned. The $1 billion approved by Congress was supposed to last until Nov. 1 but was gone after a few days due to high demand. Now Congress intends to add another $2 billion.

It's hardly a disaster of Hurricane Katrina proportions in terms of government incompetence.

But that is what NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson said on a live Fox News "Special Report" Tuesday. She was reacting to a video clip of a woman in Philadelphia telling Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) that if the government can't run the clunker program, how could it possibly handle the health care industry?

To watch, click here.

"I thought that woman actually asked a pretty legitimate question. Cash for Clunkers is like a mini-Katrina here," Liasson said. "It's not good to start a government program and not be able to execute it."

Say what?

Nearly 2,000 people died and thousands more were injured or lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Bush administration's inability to help hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans after Katrina is considered one of the greatest recent examples of government incompetence.

It is inconceivable anyone could compare that disaster to Cash for Clunkers, which simply gives people a voucher worth up to $4,500 to trade in an old car for a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Emails have been pouring into my office.

"Cash for Clunkers" is an innovative, socially and economically beneficial program that has been slowed only by its unforeseeable degree of success," wrote Tom Gleason of Lawrence, KS. "Hurricane Katrina was an epic tragedy aggravated by government inaction. If Ms. Liasson (on Fox News) finds any basis at all to analogize between the two she needs to go to work for Fox News full time."

Liasson knew pretty quickly that she had crossed a line.

"I said something really stupid, which I regret," Liasson told me. "I should have merely said anytime time the government does something less than competent, it makes it harder to get people to trust them with other programs. People died in Katrina because of government incompetence. I should not have used that as an analogy. I was thinking of an example of government incompetence and I picked one that was too big and egregious. I was over the top in my choice of a metaphor. It was a mistake."

NPR's senior vice president for news, Ellen Weiss, said, "If this had been said live on NPR's air, we would have redone the interview, and we would have acknowledged and apologized for what was said in earlier feeds both on the air and online."

Liasson has been a political contributor for Fox News Channel since 1998 and also appears as a FOX News Sunday panelist. She is also on NPR's staff and, like all NPR journalists, has to follow NPR's ethics code -- which doesn't allow NPR staffers to say something on another news outlet that they couldn't say on NPR.

"The point is I shouldn't have said it anywhere," said Liasson. "I always try to keep the ethics code in mind. It helps me set guidelines and parameters."

Weiss concurred.

"In live situations, both in other media and in front of audiences, NPR staff occasionally say things they shouldn't," she said. "That happens infrequently and we take it very seriously and address it with the individual. But a single episode of mis-speaking can be forgiven, a systemic problem cannot. Mara has acknowledged that what she said was wrong."

Appearing on two networks can be a tricky negotiation --especially as Liasson is often live on Fox. Whether Liasson likes it or not, making a gaffe on Fox reflects poorly on NPR -- as many listeners have let me know. Liasson should think about NPR's ethics code every time she appears on Fox.

Continue reading "The Katrina Analogy: A Real Clunker" >