Do Journalists Name People Guilty of Misconduct?

Marquette has loudly claimed that we should not have published the name of Cheryl Abbate, whom we reported told an undergraduate who wanted to oppose gay marriage in her class:

• “some opinions are not appropriate, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions”
•  “do you know if anyone in your class is homosexual?” . . . “don’t you think it would be offensive to them”
• “you don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments.” 
• “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.”

Marquette also upped the ante, claiming that we “linked to Abbate’s contact information.” That was flatly untrue.

But the claim that we should not have named Abbate is a bit odd, since journalists normally name the person on whose misconduct they are reporting.

Example: this last June 19, a Congressional intern shouted an obscenity at President Trump while he was walking through the Capitol Rotunda.

Interns are typically college students (as opposed to Abbate, who was 27 years old), and they don’t have any authority over anybody (unlike Abbate, who was Instructor of Record in her class).

But the profane intern has been identified in every story we can immediately find on the incident.

A Google News search for “Caitlin Marriott” tells the story.

Of course, somebody reading this post weeks or months in the future might not get the same Google result, so here is the Google search, as it exists right now, archived.

Marquette is attacking us for doing what journalists normally do.

The Dirty Little Secret

The dirty little secret here is that most of the people attacking us for naming Abbate simply don’t think she did anything wrong. They fully believe that opposition to gay marriage is “hate speech” and should be suppressed. They, quite simply, don’t think we should have exposed Abbate’s misconduct, because they don’t think it was misconduct.

That’s the reality of academia today.

Media: Then and Now

Quality Reporting on Military Affairs

Good reporting on the military is rare, to a large degree because virtually no journalists have been in the services.

But an exception of DuffelBlog. Check out its incisive and sober discussion of women in combat.

Communications Faculty Did Not Like The Warrior

From the Marquette Tribune comes news that The Warrior, an independent student publication, is shutting down, at least temporarily.

Running a campus newspaper that isn’t subsidized by a university is always a struggle, and the wonder is that The Warrior survived so long, mostly do to a very dedicated group of students.

But rather dismaying is the fact that the faculty of the College of Communication was hostile to the enterprise all along. From a Tribune op-ed:

I wrote for The Warrior for four years while I was a journalism student at Marquette. I was its news editor from 2008 to 2009 and Editor-In-Chief from 2009 to 2010.

The recent announcement about the paper shutting down indefinitely is a huge loss for the students and open discourse at the university. It means Marquette will lose a forum for a truly independent student voice.

I always felt that my experience with The Warrior exemplified what journalism should be: hard work, asking tough questions, being persistent in the face of adversity and being critical of the status quo.

One of the biggest disappointments about my time with The Warrior was the response the paper got from the faculty and staff in Marquette’s College of Communication, which houses the school-funded paper, The Marquette Tribune.

The way I see it, journalism professors and student newspaper advisors in the College of Communication actively tried to dissuade students from joining The Warrior, telling them they would not get internships or full-time jobs with experience from an independent, less supervised newspaper.

During my time at Marquette, The Warrior was not considered a legitimate student news source on campus. We were not included in any university-sanctioned journalism events, discussions or other opportunities afforded to student media. The school would not let us distribute the paper on school property or put bins on campus.

In my experience, professors would not consider clips from The Warrior to count as writing clips for their reporting classes as they did for the Tribune. What many Marquette professors told their students about the experience The Warrior offered simply was not true. I know firsthand.

One of The Warrior’s primary goals was to rally for administrative transparency and efficiency while encouraging a true discourse of ideas. Its existence is critical because it gives students an opportunity to hold accountable the leaders who spend their tuition money and guide their education.

The College of Communication’s response to The Warrior was, and still is, baffling. I could never understand why the very people who were guiding and training the next generation of journalists wouldn’t applaud and embrace the initiative and passion of some. These were the students who cared so much about journalism and true watchdog reporting that they would work long, unpaid hours, trying to make a go of an uncensored, independent newspaper.

Because of my experience with The Warrior, I interned with news organizations in Washington, D.C. for two summers, got a five-month business internship with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel my senior year and got a full-time job as a reporter with The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., right after graduation. I was at the N&O for two years and am now in graduate school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill but plan to go back into journalism after I’m done with my Master’s program.

Marquette’s response to The Warrior represents the hubris of journalism academics in trying to contain student journalism in a university-sanctioned bubble. It is also symptomatic of an opaque administration trying to control information and preserve a prescribed public image.

I love Marquette and I cherish the time I spent there. That’s why I think it’s so important to have an outlet for students to write uninhibited and participate in an open discourse to express their views and ask tough questions of the university. I hope The Warrior comes back online bigger and better than ever before.

Katelyn Ferral College of Communication Class of 2010

What’s the explanation for this? The simplest, and one that doubtless is a large part of the story is ideological bias. Communications faculty, like academia generally, are liberal and leftist. Further, there are fewer and fewer old-time liberals who worked as reporters and have a rather broad-minded and tolerant view of political conflict. Rather, Communications as a discipline comes to look more and more like the humanities.

Of course, there might be additional aspects to this. Communications schools have a mainstream media bias (with the exception of faculty who are hard leftists and think the mainstream media too conservative). They identify with the New York Times, the Journal-Sentinel, ABC, NBC, CBS and NPR, and rather dislike insurgent media (except for insurgent media on the left). Just who are, after all, these upstarts who think they can challenge the established gatekeepers and scorekeepers.

Since the Tribune is rather docile, and ultimately under the control of the College of Communications — and also staffed by people with a mainstream media orientations — it can be accepted.

The really good innovative journalists, the ones who will challenge the cozy journalistic status quo, won’t come from places like the College of Communication.

The Flynn/McBride Affair and Journalistic Malpractice at the Journal-Sentinel

The illicit affair between Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn and local journalist Jessica McBride is a fiasco any way you look at it. It badly tarnishes the reputations of both.

Presumably, we can all agree that adultery is wrong (although a lot of people, frankly, don’t seem to take it too seriously). Thus the really contentious issue surrounding the whole affair is one of journalistic ethics: did McBride commit a serious ethical breach by having sex with a fellow who was the subject of a story she wrote for Milwaukee Magazine?

The column that broke the story, written by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Dan Bice, clearly asserted that McBride had engaged in a breach of journalistic ethics. But Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy has forcefully pointed out the problem with this argument: there is no evidence that McBride had sex with Flynn until weeks after the story was turned in, and indeed two months after the rewrite that Murphy had requested was turned in.

But in a more recent article, Murphy appears to throw McBride under the bus, saying that “In the eyes of the public, McBride has compromised herself – and this magazine.” It would have been more accurate to say that in the eyes of liberal bloggers who don’t like McBride because of her politics, McBride is compromised and so is Milwaukee Magazine.

Interestingly, Murphy reports no evidence that McBride was having any sort of affair with Flynn before the story was turned in. He describes the e-mails between them as getting “chatty and friendly . . . as soon as McBride finished reporting her story on Jan. 5.” That’s about it. Murphy has nothing else to suggest any kind of erotic connection.

The McBride/Flynn E-mails

We have a collection of e-mails exchanged by Flynn and McBride. We are certain of the provenance of the e-mails, but cannot (as Bruce Murphy admitted he cannot) be certain that we have the entire record. Perhaps some missing e-mails show a torrid affair between McBride and Flynn weeks before the story was submitted. But that’s vastly unlikely, since it would flatly contradict the substance of e-mails we have.

McBride and Flynn were clearly on friendly terms before McBride turned the story in on January 5. Most of the e-mails from that period deal with the clarification of certain issues in McBride’s story.

On January 1, for example, McBride gave Flynn the passage from the profile about Flynn’s experience in Jersey City, and noted “. . . I realized it seemed a little vague. What specifically did you think the police department needed to change? And, what specific negative effect did you see politics having on the department?” Flynn responded (on January 2) with a detailed explanation.

Earlier, on December 29, McBride asked Flynn a series of questions.

1. In Jersey City, I read in an article that you had supported a mayor who didn’t live up to promises and left you a bit disillusioned. What happened with that?
2. What influence did “Crime in a Free Society” have on you, and do you think its message of rehabilitation, etc. is still apt today? I read that you were drawn to its painting of policing as a noble, purposeful profession
3. When’s the first time you met Kelling? I know you read his 1982 article but when did you first actually meet him?
4. How did 9/11 change you if at all?

Two days later, Flynn responded with a somewhat lengthy series of answers.

It is clear from the very early exchanges that both McBride and Flynn are (figuratively) “buttering each other up.” McBride, having interviewed members of Flynn’s family tells him in a December 31 e-mail “Your kids were great. Your son idolizes you. You would have probably found his comments very touching – ‘knight in shining armor’ the little boy looking up to the father in the uniform, and all of that!” In another exchange, McBride explains that she has had to put some negative material about Springfield [Mass.] into the story, but says she has some positive material from that city too and then Flynn, on January 3 replies “I think you ‘get it’ about Springfield.”

Indeed, with regard to Flynn’s enemies in Springfield, McBride quoted Churchill to him: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Flynn replied “Thanks for the Churchill quote. Now that’s REAL perspective!” Both e-mails were dated January 4.

Sometimes McBride commiserates with Flynn. In a January 1 e-mail she says to him “So, I pick up my Journal Sentinel this morning and read the story about homicides plummeting to their lowest levels since 1985. . . and black male homicides plummeting more than 64%...which are really startling figures. . . and then I turn to the JS editorial page and the lead editorial is negative and lamenting an increase in black male homicides.”

Even this early, many of the exchanges are pleasant but trivial badinage. For example, McBride tells Flynn “my maiden name is McBride and my stepmother emigrated from Ireland and is named O’Hara . . .plus, my great-grandmother was Julia Flynn LOL.” Flynn replies “We’re cousins!” McBride comes back with “Probably, 15 times removed!” All this in an exchange on December 31, 2008. This, however, was part of a very informative exchange about Irishness in which Flynn said “We were ‘lace curtain’ not ‘shanty’ Irish. And after [my father] passed we still came up with enough money to send me to the best high school in the region.” (This on December 31.)

What is missing from these early e-mails? Anything remotely erotic. It’s true that the exchange is quite cordial. Given that Flynn is the subject of a journalistic profile, he has every incentive to be cordial. And McBride has every incentive to establish a cordial relationship with her source. It’s not everybody’s style (it’s not Dan Bice’s, for example), but it’s a defensible style.

After January 5.

After January 5, McBride had turned the story in to editor Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine. Murphy asked for a rewrite (although McBride had no way of knowing he was going to do so). The cordial e-mails continued.

One exchange started when Bruce Murphy asked McBride to find out whether the drop in murders in Milwaukee was merely due to a change in the definition of “murder.” Flynn, on January 18, replied with a detailed explanation of why it was not.

Numerous other e-mails dealt with various intellectual interests. Flynn and McBride discussed the movie “Doubt,” the movie “Valkyrie,” a trip Flynn made to Washington, DC, Clint Eastwood and the movie “Gran Torino,” Milwaukee talk show host Mark Belling, law enforcement and criminal justice, concealed carry legislation, and Milwaukee mayors (past and present). And a lot of other stuff.

Flynn said he liked “Penelope Cruz in ‘Elegy’ based on the Philip Roth book, ‘The Dying Animal’” and that he is generally amused by Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

On January 27, Flynn informs McBride he has bought “Public School Administration for Dummies.” McBride’s response: “So are you going to be MPS superintendent?”

In these e-mails, the two come across as people who like a good discussion, and maybe even as intellectual soul mates.

So what is missing? Anything even remotely erotic.

The Decisive E-mails

On the very day McBride turned the story in, she wrote Flynn with the suggestion “I could tell you interesting background on Milwaukee, its chiefs, and various characters you are encountering (inside and outside the dept.). I think you’re right about Milwaukee. The environment is receptive right now. People are sick of things not working. The city’s been very tough on past chiefs. . . .” Flynn replied with “You’re on. One of these days a debrief would be helpful.” A longer e-mail from Flynn on the same day says:

Thank you. Once the article is declared done, with the expectation that you won’t be “covering” me in your professional capacity, I guess we wouldn’t be violating journalistic ethics (notice I didn’t make a smart remark) if we stayed connected and I received some of the benefit of your particular perspective.

Was this the beginning of an adulterous relationship?

Not anytime soon.

On January 27, Flynn wrote to McBride an e-mail discussing a variety of topics, which concluded with “Good to hear from you. Maybe we can connect sometime in next couple of weeks.”

On March 30, McBride suggests to the Chief “Let me know when you want to catch a cup of coffee after you get back, now that the story has been put to bed.” On April 1, Flynn responds saying “When I return let’s get together for that cup. I look forward to it.”

On April 23, after McBride’s profile had appeared on the newsstands, Flynn sent the following e-mail to McBride:

As I navigate in a sea of controversy, I wanted to take a moment and tell you the consensus among my family, friends, and the mayor is that “The Cop Who Can’t Stop” is well written, thoughtful, balanced, empathetic to its subject, broad in perspective, humorous where appropriate and a good read.

From my perspective, I’m grateful that you put so much effort into really trying to understand your subject and to place it (me) in context which is both private and public, personal and professional. I thank you also the generosity of spirit that informed your writing.

Now that that’s done, let’s schedule that coffee! If you’re really nice, you might even get a guest speaker out of the deal!

This sure doesn’t sound like two people who are carrying on an affair.

McBride responded later the same day with “It was really nice to hear from you, and I must say that your email meant a lot to me. I knew you wouldn’t like every line in that piece, but I had hopes that you would see it as being fair. . . .” Then after a discussion of how her husband Paul Bucher has often been treated unfairly, she concluded with:

Coffee would be great. Let me know what days work for you. For me, Mondays are wide open, Fridays sometimes have time available, Tues-Thurs are out due to class schedule until May 7, when classes end. A Saturday is theoretically possible albeit tougher, and Sundays are out.

Flynn then replied to her with an April 26 e-mail (if he had the hots so badly, why did it take three days to respond?):

Give me some numbers you can be reached. Scheduling something as simple as a coffee break is remarkably complicated! I get your Tuesday-Thursday conflicts. Tomorrow is wacky for me until 5, for example. Think we’ll need to be flexible. There’s stuff I’d like to get your perspective on. Maybe coffee could be lunch one day. We’ll work on it.

McBride wrote back to Flynn on April 27.

Hi chief,

It just occurred to me that you asked for my contact info and, in the entire lengthy opus that I wrote you about guns before, I forgot to provide it.

McBride then gave Flynn what appear to be her work and home phone numbers.

So we are supposed to believe that Flynn didn’t know how to contact his “on the side” lover (other than via e-mail)?

Could Flynn have been intent on getting McBride in the sack? Could McBride have been thinking that that would be nice? We can’t rule that out, but if they had the hots for each other back in December and early January when McBride was actually writing the story, they certainly showed a lot of restraint.

And it’s certainly plausible that Flynn, a public figure in an inherently contentious position, would find the opportunity to hear a briefing from a prominent local journalist to be a dandy professional opportunity. And it’s equally plausible that McBride would find a good relationship with an important figure to be a professional boon.

The Love Letter

The only evidence that can even be spun to show an affair (or even an infatuation) before McBride turned in the profile is a love letter she wrote to Flynn in May. Yet Bice and the Journal-Sentinel quoted it very selectively and tendentiously. Consider, for example, this passage:

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I think there was something from the moment we locked eyes in Anne’s office. It grew when you let me inside you with the tavern story and it slowly developed through intellectual repartee. At the time, I didn’t think romantically, not consciously, at least.

Bice only quotes “I think there was something from the moment we locked eyes in Anne’s office,” and ignores the “looking back with the benefit of hindsight” phrase, the “it grew when you let me inside you with the tavern story” phrase and the “developed through intellectual repartee” phrase. And of course, Bice left out “I didn’t think romantically, not consciously, at least.”

Properly quoting the entire passage would have made it clear that there was no affair, and not even any genuine romantic feelings when McBride interviewed Flynn in Anne E. Schwartz office in December.

In the same letter, written for Flynn to read when McBride was in France in May, there is the phrase “Where to begin? How can words properly express the last few weeks?”

Huh? “Past few weeks?”

Bice, of course, doesn’t quote this.

Finally, McBride wrote in the same letter “I wasn’t looking for this; it came to me. It surprised me, sort of crashed into my life.”

Journalistic Misconduct

Quite simply, accusations that McBride was guilty of a breach of journalistic ethics are dependent on reciting a few salacious details of the affair, and omitting the chronology of how it unfolded. Bice admits the Journal-Sentinel lacked a key April 23 e-mail showing that only after that date did Flynn and McBride get together. If the Journal-Sentinel did not have this e-mail, it would appear they were manipulated by a source that leaked a bunch of e-mails and selectively omitted the April 23 missive, and indeed other e-mails showing the same thing.

If the paper did have these e-mails, they simply chose to ignore them in order to support the theme of journalistic misconduct.

McBride, in sum, has been the victim of shoddy journalism on the part of the Journal-Sentinel and the ideological bias of local liberal bloggers. Her sins (like those of Flynn) have been considerable, but a breach of journalistic ethics is not one of them.

The (Continuing) Decline of Print Media

Our journalism colleague Steve Byers has a blog titled Marquette Student Media which, in spite of the name, deals mostly with the print media off campus. Byers is an old-style newspaper reporter, with old style newspaper reporter values, and sometimes his critique of the direction of contemporary papers can be devastating.

For four decades, American newspapers have been lulled into complacency by being virtual monopolies. They have grown fat and ossified. During my time with just The Milwaukee Journal and Journal Sentinel, I watched as it went from a lean, tight newspaper with only a few editors to one with layers upon layers of assistant managing editors, senior editors, deputy senior editors, assistant senior editors, etc. (When I started at The Milwaukee Journal its news operations had one editor, one managing editor, one assistant managing editor; today, its masthead lists an editor, a managing editor, a deputy managing editor, six assistant managing editors, and at least six senior editors.)

This, in fact, sounds like academia. At Marquette, as everywhere else in higher education, there has been a huge proliferation of people whose job is not to teach students, nor to do research, nor to provide needed services to students, but rather to “implement” various “initiatives” involving such (at best) irrelevant and (at worst) harmful things as “assessment” and “diversity.”

But universities are different from newspapers, in that the former are essentially a cartel, all the members of which do all the same things, with no choice of (for example) a university where a student will be free of politically correct indoctrination, or a university where religion is taken seriously, and a majority of the faculty are practicing Christians, or Jews or Muslims.

(Religious institutions -- genuinely religious ones, not places like Marquette -- provide a real alternative, but in academia prestige is so highly correlated with the age of an institution that newer alternatives are largely locked out of the market.)

Newspapers are not so lucky, since they face real, vigorous competition from other media, ranging from the Internet to talk radio.

We sometimes chortle a bit at the decline of the “dead tree media,” since it has come to be dominated by a standard liberal “mainstream media” worldview.

But, of course, Byers nostalgia appears to be for a world where large cities had competing papers, with different editorial policies. It was a world where editors did not see themselves as arbiters of what the citizens were allowed to see and read, since failing to report a story that would interest readers was to invite being “scooped” by a rival paper.

Byers has, multiple times, invited us to his classes to talk about blogging, since he apparently sees the enterprise as partaking of some of the vitality that newspaper journalism formerly had: aggressiveness in reporting, sharp diversity of opinions and the lack of a bureaucratic structure watching over (and stifling) the people doing the reporting.

We tend to disagree with Byers view that, if newspapers added content and did more and better reporting, the traditional newspaper model could be revived. He, for example, cites an Australian named David Kirk and explains:

He builds his argument around three pillars: strong content, addressing audiences and supporting his newspapers’ brands. He isn’t talking about cutting staff that his audience wants to read, like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and, frankly, most American metropolitan newspapers continue to do. Nor is he talking about dropping sections, ignoring portions of the audience, and allowing his readers to gradually drift away. He is talking about aggressively going after them.

Our view is that dead tree media is going the way of the horse and buggy -- the victim of technological change.

But if the form of journalism has to change, the substance has to remain pretty much the same. Good reporting, good writing, incisive commentary, quality photojournalism, provocative editorial cartooning -- all of these can prosper on the web just as they once prospered in the daily newspaper.

So we have an irony here: good electronic journalism has to reflect the ethos of the anachronistic heyday of newspaper journalism. In reality, it now reflects that ethos better than the modern bureaucratic, over-managed, cost-cutting world of contemporary print journalism.

Hispanic Journalists: Don’t Use “Illegal”

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has some definite advice about how to refer to illegal aliens.

Key thing: don’t refer to them as “illegal.”

Illegal alien

Avoid. Alternative terms are “undocumented worker,” or “undocumented immigrant.”

Illegal alien

Avoid. Alternative terms are “undocumented worker,” or “undocumented immigrant.”

Illegal

Avoid. Alternative terms are “undocumented immigrant” or “undocumented worker.” This term has been used to describe the immigration status of people who do not have the federal documentation to show they are legally entitled to work, visit or live here. The term criminalizes the person rather than the actual act of illegally entering, residing in the U.S. without documents.

Illegal immigrant

While many national news outlets use the term “illegal immigrant,” this handbook calls for the discussion and re-evaluation of its use. Instead of using illegal immigrant, alternative labels recommended are “undocumented worker” or “undocumented immigrant.” Illegal immigrant is a term used to describe the immigration status of people who do not have the federal documentation to show they are legally entitled to work, visit or live here. People who are undocumented according to federal authorities do not have the proper visas to be in the United States legally. Many enter the country illegally, but a large number of this group initially had valid visas, but did not return to their native countries when their visas expired.

These politically correct folks have a point where the word “alien” is at issue. Legally, it’s a perfectly correct term, but has taken on a variety of threatening connotations.

Many of us have seen those movies where hideous creatures chase Sigourney Weaver around this or that space ship.

But trying to ban the word “illegal” is simply an insistence that honest language be avoided.

That the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is demanding biased news reporting is most unfortunate. It tends to stereotype Hispanics in the same way that blacks in journalism have already been stereotyped: as affirmative action trophies proving the “diversity” of this or that news organization rather than working reporters who can cover a story fairly.

Just as journalism doesn’t need more Eugene Kanes, neither does it need more Ricardo Pimentels. (Pimentel, by the way, agrees with the demand for dishonest journalism in the statement quoted above.)

Journalism could certainly use more honest black and Hispanic reporters, or black and Hispanic columnists who say things at odds with what the white liberals who hired them want to hear. In other words, people different from Eugene Kane.

But even more, it could use more conservatives, Christians and people with military experience. Those sorts of people would provide the kind of diversity that matters.

Panel on Crime Reporting at Journalism School

WHAT: “Feeding the Media Beast: Crime Coverage in the Cheese State”
WHERE: Johnston Hall 103
WHEN: Thursday, February 28, 2008

TIME: 7:00 p.m.

COST: Free

Marquette University’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists invites you, your classes and your colleagues to the crime reporting panel discussion, “Feeding the Media Beast: Crime Coverage in the Cheese State” featuring:

• Tony Anderson (moderator), managing editor of the Wisconsin Law Journal
• John Diedrich, federal reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Tom Held, general assignment reporter at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Martin Hintz, author of “Got Murder? The Shocking Story of Wisconsin’s Notorious Killers”
• Michael McCann, former Milwaukee County District Attorney
• Charles Benson (just added), broadcast journalist for WTMJ

The event is in fact open to the public, so members of the Milwaukee community (Marquette and otherwise) may want to come.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Now Will Report Race of At-Large Criminal Suspects

In a bit of ill-advised political correctness, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee failed to reveal, in e-mails send to students and staff, that at-large suspects in crimes near campus were black.

This created a bit of a stir when the student online journal Front Page Milwaukee blew the whistle on the UWM administration.

Well it seems the policy has now changed. Thus this last Friday, the following mass e-mail went out to the UWM community:

Armed robbery reported near UWM campus Thursday night

There was an armed robbery and home invasion at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10, in the 2900 block of Farwell Avenue — about a block directly south of campus.

According to University Police, UWM students in the home said two men forcefully entered through the front door. The two men displayed firearms; threatened occupants; took wallets and electronics; and fled. University Police responded in support of the Milwaukee Police Department.

According to University Police reports, the two armed robbery suspects are described as follows:

Suspect No. 1, a black male, approximately 30 years old, stocky build, bald or very short hair, blue shirt with orange stripe with Nike swoosh on front, armed with a black semiautomatic handgun.

Suspect No. 2, a black male, also about 30 years old, medium build, loose cornrows hair style, wearing a green t-shirt with white writing and wearing over his hands white tube socks with stripes. He also was armed with a black semiautomatic handgun.

University Police encourage neighborhood residents to keep doors locked and windows secured.

If when off campus you notice suspicious activity or feel threatened, call Milwaukee Police at 911. Afterwards, please call University Police at 414-229-9911.

If when on campus you notice suspicious activity or feel threatened, call University Police at 9911 from a campus phone or at 414-229-9911 from a cell phone.

This message was sent by University Relations and Communications.

We suppose we understand the desire not to stereotype any particular group. But does that imply that one can’t simply tell the truth?

Further, how does one battle a stereotype (that blacks are disproportionally likely to commit crimes) when it’s true, when everybody knows it’s true and you look silly when you try to deny it?

This kind of stereotype can’t be mitigated by giving people “better information.” It is based on perfectly good information.

At Marquette

The Marquette Tribune does in fact publish the race of at-large suspects when such information is available. Consider, for example, this news brief that appeared on May 1.

The Milwaukee Police Department and Department of Public Safety are looking for a black man approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 165 lbs.

According to DPS, the man has long black hair and was wearing a black knit cap, a black nylon jacket and dark pants when he robbed a 23-year-old male student Monday.

DPS officers said they urge students and faculty not to approach the suspect.

“If you see him, contact DPS immediately,” DPS Lt. Paul Mascari said.

We’d all prefer to live in a society where there is no connection between race and crime. Until that happens, the best policy is to bite the bullet and tell the truth.

Marquette Student Journalists: Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due

Back on April 28, the Milwaukee Press Club held its Awards Dinner honoring journalists of many kinds, including student journalists.

Marquette was well-represented, with six students honored. Indeed, Marquette dominated the student media category.

On page 19 of the program was an ad bought by Marquette (see below). It listed the names of all six Marquette student journalists, with a picture of Johnston Hall in the background.

(You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Nice way to express pride in the students’ achievement, eh?

Unfortunately, there was a bit of an agenda that intruded.

Johnston Hall is the headquarters of the official university paper, the Marquette Tribune, which has offices in the basement. It is also where the Journalism Department is located.

But of the six awards given to Marquette students, four went to The Warrior, and two to the Tribune.

The Warrior is not headquartered in Johnston Hall. An unofficial paper, it’s off campus.

The ad does not list the paper in which each award-winning story appeared, concealing the fact that the majority of awards went to an off-campus unofficial paper.

And the vast majority of the Warrior staff consists of people who aren’t journalism majors.

Marquette has a right to be proud of all six of the student journalists who won awards. But a large share of the good journalism is going on outside Johnston Hall, and being done by students who may have never had a journalism class.

The Warrior staff, however, can be flattered that Marquette is trying to take credit for their achievements.

Politically Correct Racism: UWM and “The View”

Both of these are via Jessica McBride’s blog.

In the first case, there were two cases of suspicious behavior near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. How did UWM administrators respond? They sent out an e-mail warning students about the situation. They described the suspect as follows:

The suspect in both of these cases was described as a white male, in his mid-20s, 5 feet 11 inches tall, 185 pounds, brown hair and blue eyes. He drives a blue Buick sedan with Wisconsin plates.

What’s odd about that? They included the suspect’s race.

Why is that odd? Because they routinely refuse to reveal the race of black suspects.

UWM student Kyle Duerstein, in Frontpage Milwaukee, asks:

What’s the moral of the situation? If UWM’s administration wants to be idiotically “politically correct” by excluding important identifying characteristics of black suspects, at least be consistent, and leave it out for white suspects as well. Better yet, why not just send out all information that you have available, regardless of whose feelings you might hurt?

Of course, given that the people who get the UWM e-mails (and anybody attentive to media outlets that are similarly politically correct) will simply begin to assume that if the race of a suspect is not given, the person is black.

And that would be a sound assumption.

The other case involves the fact that politically correct race hustlers can’t admit that the Duke Lacrosse players were the innocent victims.

First, there is Eugene Kane, Milwaukee’s own journalistic race monger.

Eugene Kane says the Duke lacrosse players bear responsibility for their own nightmare

That’s what he told an individual I know who talked to him about the case. He thinks because they hired a stripper, they somehow deserved what they got. That’s sort of a gender twist on the old “the victim deserved it” argument.

He also thinks the “white” cops and DA are mostly responsible. The accuser doesn’t even make his list.

Just is bad are the airheads on “The View,” who insisted that it was fair to prejudge the Duke athletes, since they are white, and “white boys” do things like that.

And if they didn’t actually rape that woman, they were probably guilty of doing something like that.

Street Beacon: Second Issue Out Soon

Late last week, we interviewed Matt Ryno (pronounced like the French auto maker Renault) the editor of the Street Beacon, a “community newspaper” for the Near West Side. In spite of the “community” orientation, Ryno and several other Marquette students (organized and recognized by the university as the Urban Initiative) have been the driving force behind the paper.

One key purpose of the paper has been to help homeless people by giving them an opportunity to make some money selling copies.

We have blogged about the paper before, and have been a bit skeptical about the project, not because it lacked journalistic merit, but because we doubted the inherit viability of a community newspaper in an area we didn’t view as any sort of real community, and because of minimal participation of homeless people in the project.

But it seems the project has been more successful than we expected. A second number is slated to come out on April 10.

An article Ryno wrote for the one issue so far (released back in the fall) won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Titled “Food stores are still a needed oasis in the New West Side,” it took third place for “in depth reporting.” It reported how the closure of a food store at north 35th Street and Juneau Avenue has left a very large swath of the West Side without a sizable food market.

But Ryno seems less proud of the award than of the fact that a core group of about 10 community activists came together to try to get something done about the situation. They met with representatives of Harley-Davidson (which has a lease on the property, which is owned by Marquette) and discussed the feasibility of putting a new market there.

Harley is now using the property for a parking lot, but according to Tony Shields, Manager of Community Relations for Harley, a feasibility study is underway to evaluate the use of the property, and “all viable options” are on the table.

So the paper has had an impact.

Finances

With any new media startup, financing is a potential problem. The second issue of the paper is being financed by a grant of $500 from tolerance.org (a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center), plus proceeds from the sale of the first number of the paper, added to individual donations.

The first issue contained no advertisements, but the staff now includes a Marquette Advertising major, who will be around next year and will be seeking ads. The paper now has in place a media kit and ad pricing, and is working with Business Improvement Districts and at least one additional community paper to sell ads.

What about helping the homeless? Most of the actual neighborhood distribution of the first issue (as opposed to campus distribution) consisted of Ryno driving around and dropping off copies at locations where people might pick them up and read them.

Ryno reports that he has “talked to other street papers,” and is changing the compensation plan for homeless people. The new plan is to pay $7.00 per hour for the first two hours that a seller works. In addition, the paper will now sell for $1.00. Ryno explains that most buyers voluntarily paid $1.00 for the paper the first time around, notwithstanding that the “suggested contribution” was 25 cents. A seller would keep 75 cents of the selling price, and pay the Street Beacon 25 cents for each copy.

Staffing the Paper

If we were skeptical of the business viability of the paper the first time around, we had no reservations about the journalistic viability. A cadre of about a dozen students produced a lot of good copy to fill a rather large “news hole” (remember, the paper was twelve pages and had no ads).

Many of the original group of student journalists are still with the paper. A few have drifted off, to be replaced by new people recruited into the project.

Ryno wrote much of the copy for the first issue (about half of it, by our count), but says that having “set the tone” for the paper, he intends to “back out” a bit, letting the rest of the staff do the vast majority of the writing.

As with any student enterprise, a big issue is whether new people will take over when the student entrepreneurs graduate. Ryno admits to worrying a bit that many seniors are among the paper’s writers.

The paper now has online a handsome website with several articles from the first issue:

www.streetbeacon.com

Time will tell whether the Street Beacon can become a fixture in the Near West Side community. But every new issue increases the probability of long-term success, adding credibility and visibility while the entrepreneur who started the paper learns from mistakes and adopts to the environment, tweaking what needs to be tweaked.

The paper has already done better than we expected. It may do better still.

Street Beacon Still Alive, Coming Out in April

Last fall semester, we ran a couple of stories about the Street Beacon, a newspaper aimed at the Near West Side neighborhood around Marquette.

Not a campus paper (although produced by Marquette students), its purpose was to serve homeless people by enlisting them to sell copies to earn some income.

We were impressed with the paper as a journalistic enterprise.

But we were skeptical about the paper as a going business concern. It contained no ads. It was funded on a shoestring basis by a bit over $700 in printing costs chipped in by Editor Matthew Ryno. Participation of homeless people was virtually nonexistent. And we doubted there was really a market for a paper serving a neighborhood as poorly defined and incoherent as the Near West Side.

We may have been too pessimistic. Editor Ryno informs us that the second number of the paper is coming out in April.

The paper has a website now.

And the first number from last fall won a journalism award.

We’ll be writing more on the issue.

As of right now, it has to be added to our list of upstart student media that had made a difference. It hasn’t made as much of a difference as The Warrior or Front Page Milwaukee . . . yet. But perhaps editor Ryno, who had his journalistic ducks in line at the very beginning, now has his financial ducks in line too.

Tribune Wins Journalism Awards

The Marquette Tribune has won two awards in the Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Competition of the Milwaukee Press Club.

The stories were:

• Best News Story, First Place, Megan Hupp “Morning blast leaves 3 dead, 46 injured”
• Best Sports Story, Honorable Mention, Paul Day “The face of the team”

The Tribune’s two awards equals the two awards won by The Leader at UWM, and The Daily Cardinal at Madison.

The strongest showing in the contest was from Marquette’s Warrior, which won four awards.

So it seems Marquette student journalists have done themselves proud.

The Warrior Wins Awards

The Marquette campus alternative newspaper, The Warrior, has won four awards in the Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Competition of the Milwaukee Press Club.

According to a form e-mail send out by that organization:

We received hundreds of entries for the contest from news organizations and individuals throughout Wisconsin. The competition was judged by professional journalists and journalism scholars from across the country, from San Diego to Cleveland to Orlando to Dallas, with the judges expressing pleasure at the high quality of work done by Wisconsin journalists.

The winners in the collegiate category:

• Best Sports Story, First Place, Cassie Kowaleski “What it would take to bring D-1 football back”
• Best Feature Story, First Place, Kyle Shamorian “A night in the life of a karaoke singer: The story of one such troubadour”
• Best Editorial or Commentary, First Place, Lucas Fuller “Victory over diversity”
• Best Editorial or Commentary, Honorable Mention, Daniel Suhr “To transform the campus, adjust scholarships first”

The awards will be presented at the 77th Annual Gridiron and Awards Ceremony on April 28th at an event held at the InterContinental Hotel Milwaukee.

Journal-Sentinel Reports Race of White Suspect

Via Subject to Change, the fact that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (which has refused to report the race of black criminal suspects who are at large) is perfectly willing to report the race of white suspects. The paper reported:

The man entered Groppi’s Food Market, 1441 E. Russell Ave., about 7:10 p.m. and showed a silver and black handgun as he ordered everyone onto the floor, according to police. He approached the cashier and also grabbed a purse from a customer. No one was hurt.

Police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said witnesses described the man as a white male, six feet tall, 200 to 225 pounds and having a stocky build. They said he wore a black mask and sunglasses, and black jacket with a yellow or white stripe down the sleeves.

It might seem obviously sensible to report the race of a suspect still at large -- and quite likely a threat to other people.

But in at least one recent high-profile robbery in the UWM area, the Journal-Sentinel refused to identify the suspects as black.

And in another case in Racine, the Journal-Sentinel refused to give a racial description of a suspect who allegedly sexually assaulted a child in a school there.

The motive behind this kind of political correctness is clear enough: the media don’t want to reinforce the stereotype that blacks commit a disproportionate share of crime.

Unfortunately, blacks do commit a disproportionate share of crime (as well as being disproportionately the victims of crime).

People know that, and won’t forget that, even in the face of politically correct reporting.

Indeed, a cynical public is likely to simply assume that any criminal suspect whose race is not reported is black.

More Politically Correct Crime Reporting

The journalism students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are on a roll.

First there was the scoop on the issue of an e-mail that went out to all UWM students. A suspect was at large in a robbery, and students needed to be on the lookout.

But the e-mail omitted the race of the robber, while including other much less relevant information.

Now we have a similar case, this time involving political correctness on the part of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

When a crew of armed robbers held up five victims in the UWM area last week, the victims got a pretty good look at them.

The suspects were all black, they told police. And male. In fact, the victims provided a host of details, which police gave to the media.

But the state’s largest newspaper didn’t think the public had a right to know, even in the wake of criticism over the recent decision not to publish the race of a Racine sexual assault suspect while he was at large.

In the case of last week’s hold-up, readers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – and the university community – were asked to simply use their imaginations.

Said the newspaper about the March 1 robberies: No detailed description of the suspects was available, and the victims’ recollections of the suspects’ appearances varied.

University relations - which itself provoked controversy recently by deleting the race out of a suspect description in an email alert - sent the newspaper account on the March 1 robberies to students on Friday in another essentially useless exercise.

The newspaper’s account was not exactly true. A quick call to Milwaukee police revealed that there were some details the victims’ recollections did not vary on: Namely, the suspects’ race and gender.

The omission of the key information was not inadvertent.

[Reporter Tom] Held said the situation was discussed with an editor and the choice was made to omit the descriptions completely. That editor could not be reached for comment as he was out of the office. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Martin Kaiser, also could not be reached.

We can imagine instances where the race of a criminal would be moot. If he has already been taken into custody, and the crime isn’t racial in nature (not a “hate crime,” for example) the issue isn’t relevant.

But if the guilty parties are still at large, and if people need to be on the lookout for them, race most certainly is important.

Trying to conceal the fact that particular perps are black is an essentially useless exercise. Everybody knows that blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. That knowledge isn’t erased if the politically correct language police refuse to mention it aloud.

A ban on discussing this issue honestly simply guarantees that it can’t be addressed effectively.

UWM Student Journalist Coup: University Censors Robber’s Description

It’s not news, unfortunately, to find political correctness at a contemporary university.

But it’s still surprising to find political correctness actually endangering public safety and impeding law enforcement.

Via Sykes writes, how a student journalist exposed the dereliction of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

First, from the police report, a description of a crime:

A UWM student was not injured during an armed robbery that took place on the west side of campus at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21.

The student was walking between the EMS and Physics buildings when he was approached from behind by a black male, with a dark complexion, 5’4” to 5’-6” tall, thin build, and in his mid-20s. The man displayed a black handgun and demanded the student’s wallet and cell phone. The student complied and the man ran to a parked maroon or red Mercury station wagon, which he then drove south on Cramer Street . The man was further described as wearing jeans and a brown-and-gold jacket with the word *Ecko* or “Epikos” written in yellow or gold graffiti lettering on the back.

But when the university sent an e-mail to all UWM students about the incident, the description was as follows:

A UWM student was not injured during an armed robbery that took place on the west side of campus at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21.

According to University Police reports, the student was walking between the EMS and Physics buildings when he was approached from behind by a man in his mid-20s. The man displayed a black handgun and demanded the student’s wallet and cell phone. The student complied and the man ran to a parked maroon or red Mercury station wagon, which he then drove south on Cramer Street. The man was further described as wearing jeans and a brown-and-gold jacket with the word *Ecko* written in a graffiti style on the back.

So the e-mail lists the color of the gun, the color of the station wagon and the color of the jacket. But not the color of the robber.

Tom Luljak, vice chancellor of University Relations, told me in an interview that he made the decision to omit the suspect’s race from the email to the student body.

“It is important that the university does nothing to contribute to racial profiling,” Luljak said. He added that there are thousands of black men in the city of Milwaukee and many of them are on campus.

Apparently, it’s not important to aid in the apprehension of the robber.

Let’s suppose that it would be better if whites didn’t believe that blacks are more likely than whites to commit crimes.

The problem is, blacks are more likely commit crimes, and people know it.

It’s hard to conceal the reality shown in the City of Milwaukee 2005 Public Safety Report, that murders in Milwaukee are concentrated on the north side, and the near south side.

Thus trying to protect black males from being “profiled” by concealing the race of a particular criminal is not only fruitless, it contributes to public cynicism. People will start assuming that the perp in a particular case must be black, since his race is not being reported.

Online Newspaper at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

We passed on posting about the first issue, but it now has to be noticed.

Front Page Milwaukee is an online project of journalism students at UWM, and the Faculty Supervisor is Jessica McBride, blogger and talk show host on WTMJ.

McBride explains:

I am the editor-in-chief of this paper, which is produced by students at UW-Milwaukee’s Journalism and Mass Communication Department. Many of the stories and columns are produced in classes. The paper launched today. The goal of the paper is to enrich the public debate by providing stories that aren’t being told elsewhere. The paper also will offer a rich mixture of opinion voices. You can find everything from liberal to conservative voices in this paper, and everything in between.

Our first response is “wait a minute, this isn’t a student paper!”

Our second thought is: “students do reporting for journalism classes, why shouldn’t their work appear on the web?”

We have served as a source for countless reporting assignments in Marquette journalism classes which never appeared in any public venue. Some of this probably resulted in “C” grades -- so nothing was lost. But some probably deserved a wider audience.

The UWM journalism students appear to have done some pretty decent muckraking in their first two issues, revealing quite questionable spending by local school districts, and the criminal records of Milwaukee city cops.

The web-only format is clearly the wave of the future, given that the circulation of print newspapers is steadily declining, while the readership of the web (including the web sites of traditional papers) is headed upward.

When Marquette students founded The Warrior, they chose to go with the now-traditional pattern of a print newspaper with an online version essentially identical to the print edition. This certainly has advantages. But web technology has radically reduced barriers to entry in journalistic enterprises.

Are there faculty or students at Marquette who should follow the lead of the public university across town?