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Times Watch first published 04/09/03 and updated continuously...
Like the Southern bitter-enders still fighting the Civil War, the battle of Augusta National golf club isn’t over at the Times. Though feminist Martha Burk’s protest was a crowd-of-40 flop she herself fled after a single hour, the Times most respected sports columnist sees victory in defeat, and comes close to making a civil rights martyr out of Martha.
In “The Sporting World Could Certainly Use a Few More Martha Burks,” sports columnist George Vecsey writes, “Not to compare one musty old-boy network to the civil rights movement...” and then does exactly that.
Vecsey continues: “…but back in the early 60's people proclaimed failure every time somebody got doused with ketchup and tossed into the street during a lunch-counter demonstration. What they overlooked was the process. Photographs of the civil rights demonstrations were distributed. The whole world was watching. Before long, Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching to millions at the mall in Washington.”
He adds: “Who knows? Maybe people will discuss Martha Burk's message at Passover seders this evening.”
Then Vecsey does it again: “Golf is hardly civil rights…” he writes, and then implies it is. “It is a cerebral message, not nearly as graphic as watching some sheriff turn the fire hoses or the dogs on a bunch of freedom riders, but gradually it sinks in. Burk knew what she was doing in an obscure field out of sight of the lush lawns of Augusta.”
Times Golf Headline: A Good Lie For Martha Burk?
Times reporter Bill Pennington on Sunday spots only “about 40 supporters” at Martha Burk’s much-hyped protest at Augusta National--only ten times more people than the Times sent to cover the Masters itself. The Times tries to give Burk’s protest against Augusta’s all-male membership some late lift with a grossly misleading headline on Pennington’s piece: “She Did Not Prevail This Year, but Burk Has Time on Her Side.” That headline is based solely on a quote from an outside source.
Sportswriter Clifton Brown also forwards a bulletin from Augusta that is no doubt disappointing to the Times editorial staff: “What CBS announcers did not do yesterday was talk about the protests taking place down the street from Augusta National Golf Club because of the club’s men-only membership policy, a front-burner topic for much of the last nine months.” How hurt the Times must be: All those helpful protest-coverage pointers the paper gave CBS going for naught!
The Times Gets A Mulligan for Martha
Yesterday’s rain-out of the first round of the Masters golf tournament gave Howell Raines’ Times a clear fairway to wage its public relations campaign against Augusta National golf club and its all-male membership. Free not to waste its precious partisan ink on chip shots and sand traps, the Times put three reporters and a columnist on Augusta’s “real” story: Promoting feminist Martha Burk’s protest of Augusta National’s all-male membership policy.
Selena Roberts' column from Atlanta was par for the course, hitting on Augusta National’s “sexism” that she claims “is as acceptable as ogling at a strip joint.” Reporters Clifton Brown and Bill Pennington tee off on the issue as well.
But Roberts is at least paid to have opinions. Kate Zernike’s worshipful profile of Burk purports to be reporting. Headlined “Burk Fights the Battle She’s Given,” the article’s subhead continues the theme of Burk as happy warrior: “Thrust Into the Fray and Relishing It.”
In this instance, the Times headline is not misleading.
“In 20 years,” Zernike fawns, “[Burk] has gone from bored Texas housewife to software entrepreneur to feminist activist. She has represented the United States at international conferences on women and has a long history of fighting for feminist causes, from the Equal Rights Amendment to the rights of women in Afghanistan.” Imagine the Times talking about an accomplished conservative woman such as Phyllis Schlafly in a like manner.
Halfway through Zernike’s nearly 2,000 word piece is the only criticism of Burk she can muster: “She has been accused of wasting what even critics call her considerable talents on a trifle. And opponents say she trivialized the war in Iraq by suggesting that if female soldiers are fighting for democracy there they should be allowed to belong to a golf club here. With her twangy sound bites, Burk can occasionally sound flippant.”
Then back to hagiography: “Burk's strength has been to remain on message but to mix in enough humor to appeal to different audiences. Earlier in the evening, she appeared on the Comedy Central cable network on ‘The Daily Show,’ which is most popular among men 18-24. She gets in her line about this being about power. Then the host, Jon Stewart, asks about a backlash. ‘Well, the K.K.K. has come out in their support now,’ she says, brown eyes twinkling. ‘When the K.K.K. is on your side, you know you've lost the battle!’ The audience whoops and cheers.”
Burk, who knows who her friends are, tips her cap to the media for pushing the Augusta issue: "This one happened to set off a natural fascination not of our own making. It fell into a very robust media infrastructure, and I think we would be making a very bad judgment not to take advantage of it.” A large slice of that “robust media infrastructure” is located at West 43rd Street in Manhattan, an indisputable fact that goes politely unmentioned.
A real report on Burk would have included details like the one National Review’s Joel Mowbray uncovered: “Burk heeded the call of the State Department [in February] to represent the United States as part of a delegation to a conference on women’s issues in Tallin, Estonia. In her short time there—on the taxpayer dime—she saw fit to slam President Bush, criticize the United States generally, and bemoan the “pornophication” of society.”
The Times never brings up Burk’s radical views and shies away from restating her most strident comments, such as: "Augusta National should not be shocked by the KKK's endorsement. They have behaved in a manner that attracts this type of support." (The KKK never endorsed Augusta.)
Iraq and Augusta: The Times Two-Front War
Criticism of a “man called Hootie”…from a paper published by a man called Pinch.
The Times sports section again tees off on the Masters and Augusta National golf club, host of the tournament. Reporter David Halbfinger’s profile of club chairman Hootie Johnson was half-favorable but was nonetheless an amazing patronizing piece of work: “Just because a man is called Hootie, his friends say, does not mean he is a backwoods bumpkin.” That’s a rather hazardous line of attack from a newspaper whose publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., is called “Pinch.”
Hootie and the Blowhards: The Times Assault on the Masters Continues
Talking about becoming part of the story. Not content to almost single-handedly pump the Augusta National Golf Club’s all-male membership “controversy” into national prominence, the New York Times Monday story on CBS’s coverage of the Masters golf tournament (which begins Thursday) goes so far as to give the network tips on coordinating coverage of the expected protests.
Martha Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations has spoken out for months over the all-male membership policy at Augusta National, where the Masters is played. And the Times, as it has done for months, is “flooding the zone” (a Howell Raines phrase) for Burk’s cause against club chairman William “Hootie” Johnson, who has said he refuses to change club policy “at the point of a bayonet.”
“The Saturday protest is to end at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a half-hour before CBS starts that day's Masters broadcast, but in time for the networks' evening newscasts,” Richard Sandomir writes for the Times business section. “Sandy Genelius, a spokeswoman for CBS News, said the news division had no plan yet for how it would cover the protest. ‘It's too early,’ she said. ‘There's a lot going on in the world. We'll make a decision a day or two ahead of time.’ She added that ‘there are no restrict ions on what we can cover.’ Ms. Genelius said that because Mark Strassman, CBS News's Atlanta correspondent, was a reporter traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, the network may need to use a reporter from a CBS affiliate to report on any Masters-related news.”
Sandomir also interviewed Bob Costas for more helpful hints. Costas said CBS had a duty to cover the protests and suggested the network “ask Mr. Johnson or a representative to join a discussion with Ms. Burk ‘to cover the issue in a respectable fashion.’ Mr. Costas added: ‘If you ignore the issue, you make it worse. It's like the elephant in the room. It can't just be noted. You have to do something substantial.’” How convenient for the Times.
A little golf, perhaps? Of course not! Instead, the Times politicking continues. The first 14 paragraphs of Clifton Brown’s alleged golf story are instead devoted to the Martha Burk controversy. In the Monday sports piece, “2003 Masters: Major Championship and Major Brouhaha,” Brown writes: This week, amidst protests, press conferences and pontificating, the world's best golfers will play a major championship that has drawn attention reaching far beyond sports.” Brown is too modest; after all, the Times has done more than anyone, even Martha Burk, to draw attention to Augusta National.
Brown gets Tiger Woods’ reaction: “’It's become not just about a golf tournament anymore,’” Woods said recently. He has been asked about the controversy repeatedly, as the world's No. 1 player.” But the Times focus on Woods also involves race. Back in November, a
Times editorial urged Woods to boycott the tournament, saying it “would send a powerful message that discrimination isn’t good for the golfing business.”
To give him his due, Brown writes the sole sensible thing the Times has said about Augusta National: “With the nation at war, everyone has far greater concerns than Augusta National's membership.” Everyone but the
Times, that is, which is more enthusiastic about expanding the rights of rich women to tee up at Augusta National than the freedom of impoverished women in another place with lots of sand—Iraq.
No Spike For Columnist
Selena Roberts
Well, Times sports columnist Selena Roberts won’t be having her column spiked anytime soon. Her last two columns, both on Augusta National and the upcoming Masters golf tournament, are right in tune with the Times editorial dogma.
In the first, "Legends of Golf Can Wield Their Influence More Wisely,”
she calls on graying golfers Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer to speak out against “discrimination.”
“Faced with ageism at the Masters, Arnie and Jack unveiled their activist skills inside Hootie Johnson's office at Augusta National Golf Club last week….What a waste of influence. With the Masters set to begin Thursday, with protesters jostling for position against—and for—Hootie's unbending stance on the club's all-male membership, Jack and Arnie have slipped comfortably into the background. One minute, they're juiced on Geritol to combat ageism, the next they can't muster a mumble to rebuke sexism.”
On Wednesday Roberts, now dispatched to Augusta, writes: “Danger awaits those public figures who dare challenge their all-men club to reveal its feminine side….For a private organization, Augusta National certainly carries unaccountable public power in deciding which ism - racism or sexism - is tolerable on the local and national level.”
Yet Roberts call for activist athletes has its limits. In March, tennis star Jennifer Capriati wanted the rap song “Bombs Over Baghdad” played during her pre-match warm-up. “I wanted to support the troops,” Capriati explained. Not a good enough reason, Roberts sniffed: “Politics aside, [Capriati’s] logic was questionable. How uplifting is a song illuminated by such abrasive lyrics?”
The Times Bogeys The Pulitzer Prize
The Times considers its Augusta National reporting Pulitzer Prize-worthy, the New York Observer discovered.
Sridhar Pappu writes: “According to Times sources, after originally deciding to submit its coverage of the Washington, D.C.–area sniper for Pulitzer consideration for national reporting, the paper pulled it at the last minute in favor of its aggressive but controversial coverage of the Augusta National Golf Club. To some within the Times, this was a sign that the paper’s leadership was determined to thumb its nose at the critics who attacked the golf-club series—so much so that it submitted an almost-certain-to-lose series rather than put forth the more standard entry on the [D.C.-area]sniper.”
The Times lost in that category, by the way. The winner? Los Angeles Times reporter Kevin Sack, who left the New York Times last year in the wake of a shake-up by New York Times executive editor Howell Raines. The New York Times won seven Pulitzers in 2002 , six based on the paper’s coverage of 9-11. This year, both New York Times reporters and Pulitzer Prizes are heading west.
“Crime Falling, Yet Prisons Still Filling,” Part XVII
Every city has its annual traditions, a cycle of renewal that makes it unique. Washington has its cherry blossoms; the New York Times has its naive “Crime Falling, Yet Prisons Still Filling”-style story. This year, it comes in the form of a Times editorial, titled “Two Million Inmates, and Counting.”
“The population of the nation's jails and prisons passed two million last year, for the first time in history,” begins Wednesday’s editorial, continuing, “This soaring incarceration rate is not tied to the violent crime rate, which is lower than it was in 1974.” The Times continually overlooks the bleeding obvious reason—that violent crime is going down because more violent criminals are in jail.
Wednesday’s editorial is reminiscent of past silly stories on crime in the Times, a trend exemplified by an infamous headline from September 1997: “Crime Rates are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.” As if the two trends are unrelated.
See Also:
A Times Watch Editorial Exclusive:
AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB REP ACCUSES NEW
YORK TIMES OF ABSURD DOUBLE-STANDARD
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org