Pie Charts at Twenty Paces!
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 8, 2004; Page C01
Lou Dobbs and James Glassman are taking off the gloves.
The CNN talk show host and the Washington Post columnist went at it last month in a strikingly personal debate on "Lou Dobbs Tonight." And that was before things really got heated.
Dobbs has mounted a sustained electronic assault -- a "crusade," as the Wall Street Journal put it -- against American companies that send jobs overseas. The "Exporting America" series drew a sharp rebuke from Glassman, an American Enterprise Institute fellow, who argues that trade benefits the economy and that Dobbs has become "a table-thumping protectionist."
Now Glassman is taking aim at Dobbs's $199-a-year newsletter, saying it is praising companies such as Boeing and General Electric that are on Dobbs's own CNN list of more than 200 firms he accuses of exporting jobs.
"I find it hypocritical for him not just to be recommending these companies but to be praising them to the skies," Glassman says, calling Dobbs "disingenuous."
Dobbs invokes two ancient economists in response: "Glassman, who still thinks Adam Smith and David Ricardo are contemporary thinkers about a modern economy, is just as well positioned in his judgment of stocks. The suggestion that one is protectionist because one doesn't accept the rationalization of policy indifference to the loss of millions of jobs is breathtakingly shallow, even by Glassman's dim light."
Glassman's online article also notes that the Dobbs newsletter blames "the chronically liberal media" for misleading investors about the "boom" that President Bush has created, which "will likely propel him into a second term with a landslide vote of confidence."
Says Dobbs: "I absolutely believe the national media have not given the president sufficient credit for the stimulus that resulted from two tax cuts." But he says he has also criticized Bush policies -- and those of his predecessors -- "that have resulted in a more than half-trillion-dollar trade deficit."
A marketing pitch for the newsletter quotes Dobbs, one of CNN's founders in 1980, as saying: "I have access to intelligence and information most investors never hear about."
In the Feb. 12 CNN face-off between the two Harvard graduates, when Glassman minimized the importance of the U.S. trade deficit, Dobbs asked: "What is it with you people?" And when Glassman kept insisting that the anchor should "concentrate your intelligence" on the fact that America has the world's strongest economy, Dobbs said: "You talk like a cult member."
Glassman says he was "just flabbergasted" by the interview. "I'm a big boy. I used to have my own show on CNN. But he really did not treat me in a courteous or appropriate manner. I'm not whining about it, but it was unbelievable. . . . His idea was to portray me as some kind of heartless capitalist."
Dobbs, who has landed numerous exclusive interviews with corporate chieftains over the years, says he has criticized big companies for poor governance and executive pay before seizing on the outsourcing issue. "Mr. Glassman should not infer from that criticism that I'd like to shut down the public exchanges and strip these companies of their charges. Perhaps we should let them stay in business while they improve their performance."
Dobbs, who also writes columns for U.S. News & World Report and Money magazine and provides financial radio reports, says he's always done commentary on his program. "I'm talking with every advocate of outsourcing and debating with them," he says.
Political Junkies
The "Today" show wants you to know that Katie and Matt & Co. are really into politics. Staffers have even been studying tapes of their competitors to prove it.
On five key dates in January and all of February, the NBC morning show ran 99 political stories and interviews, compared with 63 on CBS's "Early Show" and 57 on ABC's "Good Morning America." So says NBC's research.
"For us it's a defining moment in history," says "Today" Executive Director Tom Touchet. "The decision was pretty much a no-brainer. Politics resonates more than a couple of years ago, and it works for our anchors."
But ABC is dubious of those numbers, saying they don't count the newscasts toward the top of the morning shows, when "Good Morning America" does some of its political reporting. And ABC prefers a network-by-network comparison, noting that its evening newscast has done more politics than NBC's "Nightly News" since last September, according to independent analyst Andrew Tyndall.
In fact, on Jan. 23 -- the day Diane Sawyer happened to have interviewed Howard and Judy Dean -- ABC says it did 44 minutes of politics, compared with 24 minutes for NBC.
"We do get excited about politics," says Shelley Ross, GMA's executive producer. When viewers are brushing their teeth in the morning, "in a very short period of time we tell you many things that happened in a sort of MTV format overnight." She calls NBC's argument about air time "pathetic."
Hold on, says NBC spokeswoman Lauren Kapp. ABC has "Nightline," while NBC has no comparable late-night news show ("Today" does have one hour more than its rivals, but does little politics in that 9-to-10 a.m. slot). "I think it's best if we keep this to a fair apples-to-apples comparison, while our competition thinks it's best for them to compare apples to steak," she says. "How about if we count MSNBC?"
And what about CBS's "Early Show"? "We think it makes more sense to measure coverage by quality and depth rather than an arbitrary count of total minutes," says spokeswoman Jenny Tartikoff. "We're proud we're the only network morning show to have our anchors travel with the candidates and report on location from the important primary and caucus states" -- Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Psyched Out of a Job
The Chicago Tribune terminated the contract of a freelance writer and apologized to readers last week after discovering he had misrepresented a quote following an Australian riot triggered by the death of an Aborigine teenager.
Uli Schmetzer, a Tribune foreign correspondent for 16 years before retiring two years ago, had quoted a psychiatrist named Graham Thorn as saying that the Aborigines "won't work. They steal, they rob and they get drunk. And they don't respect the laws."
After Australian blogger Tim Blair challenged the account, says Public Editor Don Wycliff, Schmetzer at first insisted his source was a psychiatrist whose name he had changed, but then admitted that was not the man's profession either.
Wycliff says the Tribune, which reprimanded Schmetzer in 1994 for borrowing material from a magazine piece, plans to investigate 300 of his stories over the past three years. "Everyone's very sad that Uli went out like this," he says.
But Schmetzer says by e-mail that the Tribune bowed to a "witch hunt" atmosphere "to find rogue journalists. . . . I acted in the interest of the readers to know there is a segment of the Australian public with this kind of opinion, a fact that nearly all Australians, like myself, are aware of, though few have the courage to say so in public."
Footnote: The Macon, Ga., Telegraph fired reporter Khalil Abdullah Friday after discovering he had written several passages "nearly identical" to a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The paper said it found 20 more stories with passages and quotes apparently copied from the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun and other papers. Abdullah apologized and resigned as president of the Middle Georgia Association of Black Journalists.
Rumor Mill Strikes Again
Another politician is grappling with damaging, Internet-driven rumors about infidelity. But this one is fighting back.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry sought out the Austin American-Statesman last week to deny the "irresponsible" and "salacious" rumors, which also have indicated he is headed for a divorce. Perry blamed "a well-thought-out, organized effort" by his opponents and said the media should expose "the anatomy of a smear campaign."
Everyone in the Texas press knew about the rumors, but several news outlets couldn't prove anything. With certain Web sites stoking the rumors, Perry knew his denial would put the story in play.
The governor took a swipe at state Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting for referring to the rumor at a rally where people carried such signs as "It's OK to be gay, guv." Soechting accused Perry of "injecting his mean-spirited politics into everyone else's personal life."
More Martha Misfortune
CNBC blew it Friday afternoon when the Martha Stewart verdict came in. Reporter Mike Huckman kept checking the wrong boxes on a large chart as he gave the news. "Number one -- Not guilty for Martha Stewart on the conspiracy charge." This went on for nearly two minutes until Huckman got word that Stewart had been convicted, and apologized.
Senior Vice President David Friend called Huckman "the best reporter on the story," adding that "in a chaotic moment, he misheard some aspects of the verdict and we corrected it." MSNBC briefly put up a "Not Guilty" graphic on the conspiracy charge but a correction came within seconds.
Nice While It Lasted
New York Times reporter Jesse McKinley ran afoul of the paper's rules by allowing "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to redecorate his Manhattan apartment for a segment. McKinley got a talking-to after the New York Post reported the makeover and, says spokesman Toby Usnik, will "reimburse the program for the fair market value."
Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.
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