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Media Matters
October 9, 2003
Names (Not) in the News on NPR?
By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
Ombudsman
National Public Radio
When it comes to political journalism, some assume the basest of motives in the media's coverage. Occasionally, they insist that NPR must also fit their worst assumptions.
A recent case in point: A number of Web sites such as the Traprock Peace Center and Eschaton urged their readers to complain to NPR about an apparent discrepancy in a news story between the audio and its transcript.
The story aired during Morning Edition on October 2. The report by legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg concerned the naming of a CIA operative who is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Ambassador Wilson reported to the White House that he could find no evidence that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellow-cake uranium in Africa to try to build nuclear weapons. He also went public with his findings in an op-ed piece written for The New York Times in July.
The naming of the ambassador's wife by syndicated columnist Robert Novak provoked a protest by the CIA. The CIA asked that the origins of the leak be found. The Department of Justice announced its intent to investigate.
(Department of) Justice Delayed?
Totenberg, in discussion of this story with host Bob Edwards, mentioned that the White House asked that the Justice Department delay the announcement of the investigation for
several hours.
Some listeners (and journalists) assumed that this delay could give White House staffers an opportunity to destroy evidence that might indicate the source's identity.
Although Totenberg mentioned this in her report, the transcript showed no such allegation.
That was enough to raise the suspicions of Traprock readers, like Sarah Metcalf:
I've just read that the transcript you offer of Nina Totenberg's report yesterday morning on the investigation of the leak of Joseph Wilson's wife's identity has been cleansed of the part where she spoke of the weird, and surely improper, delay requested by the White House of the Justice Department in issuing its memo to White House staffers on not destroying pertinent records. What's going on???!
Here's what was said on the air but is still missing from the transcript:
TOTENBERG: "The White House asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?"
An important part of the story, no doubt.
A Simple Explanation?
The explanation from NPR is straightforward:
Morning Edition and All Things Considered are updated and re-fed to accommodate listeners in each time zone. Because it is cost prohibitive and repetitive for NPR to provide text and audio of every feed, it is our practice to use, for archival purposes, the last and most up-to-date, feed of each program as the final text. However, you can find the original audio of this piece on our Web site, www.npr.org.
It's an explanation that makes the best sense, but perhaps not in an environment where listeners can assume the worst.
In future, NPR Online might better serve its readers (especially in these politically charged times) by noting where a story has been edited for time between its first and last editions.
To Name or Not to Name?
In a side issue, astute listeners have noted that the name of Ambassador Wilson's wife has never been mentioned on NPR's air.
News Vice President Bruce Drake had this explanation for a reporter:
On issues like these, where there are questions of privacy or other issues that make you think twice about divulging someone's name, I prefer to err on the side of being conservative. In this case, there was no journalistically compelling reason to name her and keep naming her in our news reports, given that she was already put in a difficult position. She is a bystander rather than a player in this story and I don't think that our listeners lost anything in terms of the important elements by not knowing her name.
While I understand and would normally agree with this logic on most stories where privacy is an issue, the point of not sharing a name that has been in every other medium seems lost. I think it ill-served the listeners in this case. The unintended consequence of leaving her name out caused some listeners to wonder if there is some nefarious political reason behind this. NPR appeared (to me) to be unnecessarily high-minded in keeping the name out of its reports.
"Where's Kucinich?"
Finally, many listeners complained that in the recent Democratic candidates' debate held in New York, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich's name also seemed to be kept away from the ears of NPR listeners.
Ken Rudin is NPR's political editor. When listeners complained about the apparent absence of Kucinich, and the overabundance of Wesley Clark, Rudin had this typically candid response:
First of all, I feel very strongly that, given the fact that we are already in Debate #4, and given the fact that -- for better or worse -- all the anticipation for this one had been on Wesley Clark, it would not have served our listeners justice to squeeze in 10 sound bytes from 10 candidates just so we could say we heard from all 10. Secondly, if you heard our coverage of the last debate -- as well as comments from me on Talk of the Nation -- you would have heard a lot of coverage of Kucinich's views and comments. I think it becomes dizzying if we feel we need to state 10 positions or 10 candidate "sound bites" in each piece. Somewhere in this process, given the limited time we get, we need to determine the important things that were said. I know that is subjective, and often leads to vigorous debate from our listeners. But that is my job as political editor.
We didn't focus on Wesley Clark because he is the "frontrunner" -- and I agree with you, it is ludicrous to talk about "frontrunners" when no one has yet to cast a vote. I hate that the media does that, and to be brutally honest, I hate when NPR does that. Anyway, we focused on Clark because he was the buzz of the week, he was new to the process and -- for some reason only God knows why -- he has zoomed to the front of the pack in a few national polls. This, despite no one knew what specifics he was offering. But people wanted to learn more about him. So that's why we spent a lot of time on him. And we focused on Dean, Kerry and Gephardt because that's where the focus of the debate was last night.
But the failure to even mention Kucinich's name in our piece this morning is awful, and I take full responsibility for it. I just don't know why I failed to catch it. And when I heard the piece on the air and noticed immediately the omission of his name, I tried reaching the reporter to get her to retrack (re-record the script), but to no avail. I feel terrible about it.
Listeners can contact me at 202-513-3245 or by email at ombudsman@npr.org.
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
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