Different day, different, er, stuff?
I suppose I like and admire the Powerline boys as much as anyone, but how did we get from "Good Lord. That resume was padded? It's hard to imagine how it could have been much weaker" on Sept. 2 to "Brownie kicks butt" yesterday? Much less to "I thought it was a mistake when President Bush cashiered Brown, and his performance tonight validates that judgment" from "I think Brown's padding of his resume constitutes sufficient reason for him to resign or be removed." (Okay, that last link was from a different powerline boy, but the first two are the same guy.) Note this, too: . . . there really was no excuse for having a director with as weak a background as Michael Brown's. I hope the administration understands that now."
Nonetheless, the powerline entry beats the pants off this partisan drivel from the Chicago Tribune. If you can't see bias in that piece, you're not competent to read a newspaper (First graph: Michael Brown, the Bush administration's ousted emergency management chief, went before Congress on Tuesday unbowed by fierce criticism of his handling of Hurricane Katrina, admitting few errors of his own and laying most of the blame for the debacle of early relief efforts on local officials in Louisiana." Can *you* find the judgement words?)
posted by ColumbusGuy @ 2:21 PM
2 Comments:
You sound like Bill O'Reilly.
What do you want reporters to say? Not mentioning the fierce criticism Brown's received wouldn't be fairness, it'd be negligence. That's the whole point of the hearings and the story. Mentioning he's unbowed by it is, if anything, a positive image of Brown.
Did he admit many errors? No. Did he lay the blame on others? Yes.
The only "bias" I see is calling early relief efforts a "debacle," even if 99% of the nation agrees with that characterization.
I'd like to see you rewrite this--it'd be more biased, but completely lifeless.
You sound like any producer or reporter defending the indefensible. "We printed it because they said it." Yet, somehow, only some of the things said get printed, and not others.
This is really quite easy, and instead of rendering the prose and story lifeless, it will make it more robust.
First, and so many good writers and editors know this, just remove all the adjectives. "Former FEMA chief Michael Brown defended his agency's conduct during Hurricane Katrina in testimony yesterday before the U.S. Senate." Then, you add a nice, moderately long quote of Brown's that in fact validates what you, the reporter just wrote.
As it stands, they've got themselves in so many holes there's no way a 600 word story is going to fill them. Debacle? You say so (based on what? All that great factual reporting about rapes in the Superdome?) Unbowed? What does that look like? Not just criticism, but "fierce" criticism? What relevance is that anyway? Why not build your information up one fact at a time? Good writing actually uses facts, and it turns out to be far more interesting than all the screaming you can do. Plus, it has the benefit of actual accuracy and standing up over time.
Believe me (and if you've read the story you know), there's plenty of room in there to establish that criticism has been offered. In fact, you do the same thing there: simple introductory statement, then the quote. Much more powerful, much more reliable.
Turn down the volume, turn down the attitude, and let the quotes and the facts speak for themselves. Chances are, your readers are at least as smart as you are and can come up with "fierce" "debacle" and "most" all by themselves.
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