Sharon Waxman shames the New York Times

The New York Times, in its efforts to transform itself into a truly national newspaper, has of late decided to beef up its coverage from the third most important city in the country, Los Angeles. LA has never had anything approaching the depth of coverage that New York and Washington have, but now the Times wants to start breaking entertainment-industry news, and to become more relevant to west-coast readers.

After a long and high-profile search, then, the Times finally alighted on Sharon Waxman, a Washingon Post style reporter, to replace the fluffy and harmless Rick Lyman. A former foreign correspondent, Waxman was charged with getting her byline on the news pages, rather than simply observing the Hollywood hype machine.

And she's done just that, with two consecutive stories, yesterday and today, on the ongoing Michael Jackson affair. The first one put a lot of meat on the bare bones of the "Jacko X" story, trying to get to the bottom what the Nation of Islam was and wasn't doing with the beleaguered popster. After talking to half a dozen sources, both named and anonymous, Waxman said that the Nation of Islam was essentially controlling all access to Jackson, resulting, inter alia, in the departure of his longstanding spokesman, Stuart Backerman.

The story was solid and well-reported, and even included a classic non-denial denial from Jackson's lawyer, Mark Geragos: "Mr. Geragos said that members of Mr. Jackson's security detail were Muslim but that that did not mean they belonged to the Nation of Islam." That's right, Mark, but it also doesn't mean they don't.

Ultimately, however, the Times was late to the story, which was first broken as early as December 18.

Waxman's big scoop, then, was today, with an article headlined "Michael Jackson's $1 Million Interview Deal". This story, in contrast to yesterday's, is a lot rockier, and, frankly, not up to the normal reporting standards of the New York Times.

This isn't a case of solid reporting under a sensationalist headline: the lead, in typical let's-try-to-fit-everything-into-one-sentence fashion, says that "Michael Jackson struck a deal with CBS to be paid in effect an additional $1 million for both an entertainment special to be broadcast on Friday and his interview on '60 Minutes' this past Sunday, part of yearlong negotiations between CBS and Mr. Jackson, a business partner of his said on Tuesday."

There follows 1,200 words of very dense and hard-to-follow prose, during which none of the questions raised in the lead are really answered. What does "in effect" mean? Who's the "business partner"? And was Jackson paid, or is he just of the opinion that he has "struck a deal to be paid"?

The story, of course, if it really was a story, could have been reported much more simply: "CBS paid Michael Jackson $1 million for the interview he gave to them." But the Times never really comes out and says that: rather, it says that the $1 million was "additional", while remaining tantalisingly vague on the subject of what, exactly, it was additional to.

What we know is that CBS had a $5 million deal with Jackson to put on an entertainment special during a sweeps period, and that CBS had already advanced the singer either $1 million or $1.5 million of that fee, depending on whom you believe. The special was cancelled when Jackson was charged, and then reinstated after Jackson gave the interview.

Everything else is murky. Here's the Waxman reporting:

Both CBS and the Jackson business associate said that Mr. Jackson had failed to record the show, effectively rendering the $5 million deal moot. CBS tried to recoup some of the money it had advanced by offering another $1 million in exchange for an interview by the correspondent Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" last February, the Jackson associate said.

Everyone agrees that interview never happened, because CBS never paid Jackson. Fast forward to last week:

The latest round of negotiations resulted in an agreement to do the aborted interview with Mr. Bradley, an airing of the special without the still-incomplete music video and another $1 million to Mr. Jackson, according to the Jackson associate.

I've read these paragraphs over and over again, and I just can't make sense of what they're trying to say. If the Michael Jackson special was "moot" as long ago as February and CBS wanted its $1 million back, how was it going to get that money by paying the star another $1 million on top?

More importantly, what was the $1 million on top of? Was it on top of the $1.5 million already advanced, or was it on top of the $5 million already agreed for the special? It's a world of difference: if it's the former, then far from paying for the interview, it would seem that CBS actually managed to get its Michael Jackson special for half the agreed price. But nowhere in her 1,241 words does Waxman deign to actually do the maths, and tell us that $1.5 million + $1 million = $2.5 million total, or that $5 million + $1 million = $6 million total.

If CBS ends up paying $6 million for a special plus an interview, after already agreeing to pay $5 million for a special, then it certainly looks as though the station has paid $1 million for an interview. If, on the other hand, CBS ends up paying either $2.5 million or $5 million for the special plus the interview, then it looks as thought the interview was free.

But Waxman completely fudges the question, simply saying that "it was unclear how much Mr. Jackson will ultimately earn from the programs."

In a case like this, where you're accusing a major news organisation of a major ethical impropriety, you had better have your facts straight: making the accusation and then saying that the facts are "unclear" is pretty dodgy journalism.

What's worse, this entire story is based on a single anonymous source. The only backup that Waxman has for her claims is this one "Jackson associate," whom she admits "was speaking to the news media because he had not been paid his commission for negotiating the deal and had been denied access to Mr. Jackson".

So scratch that: the entire story is based on a single anonymous source with an admitted axe to grind. How often do such stories make it into the New York Times's news pages? Not often, I'd hope. If the Times does run such stories – and I'm sure that most of us would rather it didn't – then it should do so only when the source is very, very senior, and very, very trusted. But neither of those crtieria seems to obtain in this case: in fact, Roger Friedman of Fox News says today that

Maybe someone should tell Times editor Bill Keller that Waxman spent a good deal of her day on Monday chatting up Jackson's former manager Dieter Wiesner. Now back in Germany, where he owns sex clubs, Wiesner was very happy to tell Waxman anything he could think of to destroy Jackson's reputation.

I have no idea if Friedman is right, but it certainly fits: Wiesner was a named source in yesterday's story about the Nation of Islam, although he provided no on-the-record quotes. He was also certainly in a position to be getting commissions for negotiating deals.

In the end, I'm perfectly happy to believe the worst of everybody involved in this – Jackson, Wiesner, Moonves, Friedman, and all the others. But the New York Times shouldn't print such an incendiary story about a rival news organisation unless it's sure it's got its facts straight. I'm reasonably sure that the New York and Washington news desks would never have printed this story; the LA bureau should not be held to a lower standard.

UPDATE: Lisa de Moraes, in the Washington Post, weighs in with vehement CBS denials of just about everything in the article.

Posted by Felix at 14:17 EST

Comments

Good on you Felix, for calling BS on shoddy journalism. I'm afraid that the LA desk is just following the LA patern, which is to say, reportage based on rumor with little or no fact checking - a style of journalism not unique to Los, but definitely perfected there, and perhaps most frightening - a style that is being copied by media outlets of the world at an alarming rate. Thanks Rupert.

Posted by: bafc23 at 14:55 EST, January 01, 2004

Pink and Blue? Aww come on! Is it a boy or is it a girl. The Yellow before was bad, but better than this Pink and Blue...
Heeelllp!
Happy NEw year!

Posted by: color blind at 22:36 EST, January 01, 2004