“Three Reporters,” Is Right

/in /by

I consider myself a bit of an expert on live-blogging. So I had to cover this.

Remember how we live-blogged the Libby trial? We always had at least two people covering the trial: someone in the media room, live-blogging the minute-to-minute events, and someone in the court room, watching interactions between the people (those weren’t visible in the media room) and getting a feel for the overall trial. At times, though, we had three people covering the trial; that third person might be doing lunch and recap posts or covering the trial from their particular expertise (Pach viewing the trial from the standpoint of a shrink, for example). Having the third person was a welcome relief for what was a long, grueling process (remember–Jane was just out of surgery and it was over a month and a half from jury selection to verdict).

Plus, the trial was something of real consequence and detail. It really helped understand what happened, having at least a second person there to double check the details.

Two, maybe three people to do original reporting from the site, as well as detailed commentary on a trial of real consequence.

Which is why I share Athenae’s shock.

Three Reporters

The Internet continues its slaughter of serious journalism about serious things:

New York Times reporters Helene Cooper, Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny live-blogged the so-called beer summit of President Obama, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the officer who arrested him in Cambridge nearly two weeks ago, Sgt. James Crowley.

It took three of them to "live-blog" the "beer summit." I mean, I’m sorry, but Puck and Willie B could have handled that assignment admirably and Puck just right now ran headfirst into a table leg, so.

It gets even better! NYT says "Helene Cooper reported live from the White House." But down below in the post, Cooper admits she wasn’t in the pool covering the "event."

Here at the White House, the handful of reporters who are in the press pool will be taken to the beer summit site. Unfortunately, I do not have pool duty. So I and the majority of the press corps will wait impatiently to get the pool report from our pool colleagues.

Three people, relying on pool reports and the same televised coverage you and I got (and FWIW, I was getting that pool coverage as well). 

For an eff-ing 40 minute "beer summit."

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  1. justbetty says:

    All I can say is “Al-Jazeera-English.” I’m lucky to have this option through the local cable company. It has helped me make it through the period of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson and the beer summit stories on US TV stations. They have interesting, in-depth stories about events around the world, including the US, that seem actually fair and balanced to my mind. I just can’t watch US- based news stories most of the time and never when it comes to the health care debate. And BBC isn’t what it used to be either.

  2. bobschacht says:

    The MSM doesn’t get how to cover an event. During Katrina, CNN sent Anderson Cooper, and his team did a pretty good job, but for the most part, they don’t seem to know how to cover an event. I think their standard is 1 reporter, and 1 camera guy for TV work, and probably just one reporter with a microphone for radio work, and for newspapers, just one reporter.

    I think FDL coverage of the Libby trial should become a classic classroom exemplar of how to do it.

    Bob in HI

    • Teddy Partridge says:

      One of our local newscasts now blends reporters with camera operators and sends just one person out in the van alone to many “on-the-scene” reports.

  3. AirportCat says:

    What boggles my mind is how few people realize that the arrest that triggered the whole stupid episode was a bad arrest. And how many people seem to be “OK” with the fact that a man was arrested on the front porch of his own house for what amounted to pissing off a cop. And the MSM plays right along with teh stoopid. Zeus on a Cracker, is this what it has come to? Can’t we do any better than this?!?

    Oh well. Off to buy a new car and get rid of the old, as long as the cash-for-clunkers money holds out … let it at least last through lunch and I should be OK.

    • KayInMaine says:

      Can you imagine if a black man in Cambridge stands on his front porch yelling for his dog to come? He’ll be arrested! And the neocon white race will applaud once again. *smacking forehead* The neocon white race doesn’t know or understand the laws in our nation. Sad.

  4. phred says:

    Imagine how many NYT reporters it would take to do the job you do EW… Nope, I can’t count that high either ; )

    FWIW, I’m happy to let the NYT WH reporters wistfully peer through the fence at the beer garden, it keeps them from making a mockery of their profession. When I want real reporting, I come here.

  5. BoxTurtle says:

    If I was to ask 10 random people on the street what the latest health care package looks like, I bet only one or two could tell me. But every one of them could tell me Obama drinks Bud Light.

    I’m not sure how much to blame the media here. For whatever reason, beergarden seems to interest people.

    Boxturtle (Not sure Obama is my idea of a beer buddy. He’s wearing a necktie, fer gosh sakes!)

    • emptywheel says:

      That, and he drinks crappy ass beer.

      They all drank bad beer, IMO.

      And I’m amused that the biggest news that came out of this–that Biden doesn’t drink–was not considered credible.

      • TheOrA says:

        That, and he drinks crappy ass beer.

        They all drank bad beer, IMO.

        Obviously a careful bit of angling to entice further donations from those of us who think Bud InBev Light is more properly used to spray on your lawn at 4th of July to keep the thatch down.

        • Twain says:

          Not a beer expert but I do think Bud is the worst beer I’ve ever tasted – Foster’s is not far behind.

      • Petrocelli says:

        I think they served Murkan Beer to avoid controversy, otherwise BO would prolly be having a Stella and Gates would be having his Red Stripe.

      • Teddy Partridge says:

        Also: foreign-owned beer companies, all of them. At least that’s what Colbert thought was important.

    • Petrocelli says:

      The MSM is in the tank with the powers that rule us … try to keep us focussed on the wrong things while the treasury is robbed and liberties are removed in the still of night.

      Like George Carlin said, freedom means “… choosing between paper or plastic, cash or charge, aisle or window, smoking or nonsmoking, Coke or Pepsi. These are your choices. Everything else is kind of laid out for you. You get to do what they really want. They do what they want. The ones who own this country, they do what they want to do.”

  6. Jkat says:

    i’ve heard of people being arrested for public intoxication while standing inside their front door stoop after responding to a police knock ..

    that seems to be an accepted police practice here in knoxville TN ..

  7. Rayne says:

    You know what didn’t get covereage?

    Biden.

    His presence intrigued my spouse, with the rest of the hoopla being a waste of time as far as he was concerned.

    [edit: damn, EW, you did it again! my machine was hung up and wouldn’t post my comment about Biden. My spouse made a crack about Biden being there for the beer because he doesn’t see him with Obama very often. Would have been nice if the report we watched last night had said anything at all about Biden – especially about his not being a drinker.]

    • phred says:

      Biden’s presence was obvious, it made the count even: two white guys and two black guys. As if life were a chess board. It wouldn’t do to let Fox get footage of two-on-one would it… I can see the chiron now: Two Angry Black Men Gang Up on White Cop. As if the entire event wasn’t stupid enough.

      • Rayne says:

        Well, that’s what you and I saw, but it wasn’t what my news-illiterate husband saw. He just saw Biden and it struck him as odd since in his busy corporate-go-go-go world, he never hears anything about Biden.

        Remember that a lot of management people are like my spouse, only get their news in 10 second sound bites while waiting to board flights. Important segment of the audience, but completely forgotten by the media. Can you imagine what little they’ve heard about health care reform?

        • phred says:

          Sadly, yes. And that’s the problem. We have legions fretting over beer preferences and no one left to explain policy to the public. Perhaps we need to coin a new phrase: Taxation Without Information ; )

  8. Petrocelli says:

    “I consider myself a bit of an expert on live-blogging.” – Marcy

    Understatement of the year …

  9. Hmmm says:

    I’m regularly thankful for good policing. But the problem one of the problems with citizens habitually giving police officers a presumption of generalized authority beyond what the law grants them, and habitually cooperating accordingly, is that it creates a penumbra within which a bad officer, or a good officer having a really bad day, can do illegal things, including improperly leveraging power of their office, with almost complete impunity. My question for the authoritarians is this: How can bad police behavior ever be contained if citizens simply yield to every bad order from a cop? And if bad police behavior isn’t contained, is what happens in the long run the kind of America we want to live in?

    (Apologies for the semi-on-topic crosspost; see also KellyCDenver’s Seminal post.)

  10. Teddy Partridge says:

    But it wasn’t just beer-thirty, Marcy. It was about RACE. I wonder how ethnically balanced TradMed thought its reporting [sic] teams needed to be, just in case somebody threw a haymaker. And did any of the four (how did Biden get included, to make Crowley feel less alone??) ever actually DRINK any beer?

  16. MrCleaveland says:

    I don’t often drink beer. But when I do, I get absolutely hammered.

    Stay smoochie, my friends.

  21. demi says:

    Hot damn. I learn something new everything I come here.
    Joe Biden’s White?
    Sometimes I am just so clueless.

  22. SanderO says:

    There has been no MSM forensic reporting on the entire incident. Once again its the balance thing… He did x wrong and that was balanced by he did Y wrong and Obama stuck his face in and that was wrong and you don’t diss cops even when the are wrong and it had to be about race because two black men spoke up blah blah blah.

    Over the week we have had the facts dibble out and to my reading it’s pretty damning of Crowley and the Cambridge police. Showing up at the WH with a lawyer and a police union leader was nothing more than a visual statement that they are not backing off their perch of power and righteousness.

    There was an opportunity to bring up all the cases of egregious police abuse of blacks in American, Michael Stewart, Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Sean Bell, Anthony Baez, tens of them in NYC alone and all the driving while black incidents that have been documented by the 10s of thousands also in NYC (multiply that 100 times for the country.

    I haven’t seen that lesson being taught to police. I haven’t even seen or heard about Cambridge police investigating the incident.

    I am waiting for the lessons learned from the incident.

    My take away:

    You don’t slam the behavior of police if you are the POTUS.
    You look forward and don’t punish some people who have acted unlawfully.
    People in Power get a pass PIPGAP

  23. SanderO says:

    Biden was there to make it reinforce the idea that it was a chat no the President acting as a mediator. You don’t want the perception of blacks in power ganging up on whites either.