The Hole Truth
The Tennessean panders to conservatives and advertisers
By Wendell Rawls Jr.
How many of you think The Tennessean is too liberal?" Leslie Giallombardo, the publisher of the newspaper, asked a group of business people at a civic club luncheon a few months ago.
Surprise. Almost every hand flew skyward. It's hard to imagine what other response she expected. Her newspaper could publish the right-wingnuts Cal Thomas and Mona Charen and the ethically challenged Maggie Gallagher every day and still the conservative trough slurpers would whine for more. It's even harder to imagine she needed to ask.
Where has she lived for the past few years? Hasn't she had conversations with her neighbors? Has she read the letters to her own editor? Has she watched election returns? Doesn't she realize that Nashville is surrounded on all four sides by Tennessee?
If nothing else, it's instructive to the readers—and apparently even more to her newsroom leaders. It may explain why Jesus seems to have camped out on Page One. It may explain why Sen. Bill Frist is treated with kid gloves, even when he cavalierly chooses to perform a neurological diagnosis (not his medical field) by viewing a 4-year-old videotape. ("Politics, medicine intersect for Frist in Schiavo case" and "Anti-Democratic Christian event to include Frist.") The newspaper's reporting often ignores Frist's shameful politicking for a White House bid in 2008, including his exploitation of the Schiavo case, which was an abject sop to the Karl Rove-controlled religious-right base. In fact, the newspaper allows Frist benign cover: "For his part, Frist denied any political motivation at all...."
It may explain why the newspaper calls physician-owned hospitals a threat to for-profits like the Frist family gold mine, HCA, which has paid out millions of dollars in fines for defrauding the taxpayers while the senator kept quiet. He wasn't involved, of course. But he did take their money, and he used a lot of it to launch his run for the U.S. Senate and the myopic career he has carved there.
The paper also rewards big advertisers with free but valuable P.R. and marketing. As a young journalist, I was repeatedly cautioned against mentioning brand names in articles and to name a business only if the article was about that business, its practices or employees. American journalism has been running in a greedy direction for a while, but the morning paper seems to be in full gallop. It has apparently opted to engage in what the entertainment world of cinema and television calls "product placement."
In the Monday, March 21, Living section, a piece about Reba McEntire's fashions consumed almost three-quarters of the section front and became little more than extraordinary, free publicity for Dillard's department stores. The article and photographic cut lines mentioned Dillard's seven times, and noted that the clothing is "available only through Dillard's, which in the Nashville area has stores in Green Hills, Rivergate, Hickory Hollow, Bellevue and Cool Springs."
An article about Frisbee golf (more gloriously named "disc golf") in a zoned edition prominently guided the reader to where to obtain the discs. But it was a nice, colorful box featuring a variety of discs (three-disc set for $37.76) from only one source—Academy Sports and Outdoors. Calls to places listed in the telephone book and interviews at a course found several businesses that have such discs, including two gas stations.
Surely it was mere coincidence that five days later the newspaper ran a full-page, four-color Academy Sports and Outdoors display advertisement for—golf shirts.
The Tennessean already has advertisements on Page One and section fronts. It shouldn't be too long before we see a Coke bottle or Budweiser can featured in yet another among the boundless array of promotions the newspaper passes off as news.
A new kind of fair and balanced
The news pages also have taken a more partisan approach to covering government.
The reporters and under-editors are being pressed to come up with major Page One and other section front "centerpieces" that can be developed well in advance of publication and feature pre-packaged layout. One Tennessean reporter says he "spent more time with graphics and photo editors than reporting and writing the story." Using lots of space for such visuals requires less actual reporting and writing—and fewer personnel. It's like cotton candy—big and eye-catching, spun sugar and air, a sweet diversion that dissolves to very little that matters.
And many other reporters have been directed to search databases for "gotcha stories" to feature in "centerpiece" packages.
When the "centerpiece" focused on criticizing the use of postage accounts by state legislators, it was based on complaints by two Republican wannabes who lost their races last November. And every legislator pictured was a Democrat, even though two of the top 10 postage spenders were Republicans, including legislative leader Sen. Ron Ramsey of Blountville. Every graphic presented was critical of Democrats who sent mail to their constituents in the days and weeks before the election, which is legal.
That's a version of fair and balanced that conservatives can embrace.
Wendell Rawls Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has worked at The Tennessean, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times and is now a professor of journalism at MTSU. Email him at wlrawls@comcast.net.
Wendell Rawls Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has worked at The Tennessean, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times and is now a professor of journalism at MTSU. Email him at wlrawls@comcast.net.
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