by David Safier
This morning's Star carries an op ed by our own Mike Bryan which is an answer to Josh Brodesky's column last Sunday, Speculation, innuendo become cyber-staples of blog world.
First, my thanks to the Star for giving Mike a chance to respond in the paper. Second, my admiration for Mike's excellent piece, both from the standpoint of tone and content.
Here at BfA, we've held back commenting on Brodesky's piece until Mike had a chance to respond in the Star. Now that it's out, let me put down a few thoughts.
I had a 45 minute conversation/interview with Brodesky before he finished his column. He seems like a decent, intelligent guy. But man, is he unequipped to write about the content of blogs!
Brodesky admitted to me, as he mentioned in the column, that he doesn't really read blogs. From the column:
"What you are missing is an understanding of the culture of a blog," Safier said. Maybe so. I don't read many of them.
"I don't read many of them," is something of an understatement. Brodesky doesn't read, or know much about, blogs, period. He showed no recognition when I mentioned Talking Points Memo, for instance, which is the touchstone for a progressive-leaning blog which now has grown into a Blog-plus, with a large staff of journalists who report as well as a number of staffers and others who act as bloggers and columnists. And Brodesky had no idea there are a number of anonymous bloggers writing in Arizona politcal blogs until I told him.
Brodesky says he's too busy to follow blogs. Fine. That's his choice. A poor choice, in my opinion, for a youngish journalist in a quickly evolving journalistic world, but his choice. But he shouldn't write about blogs if he hasn't taken the time to see how they work. That's just foolish. And amateurish. And un-journalistic.
So, the question which occurs to me is, if Brodesky doesn't read blogs, how did he come to pick out a few posts from BfA to write about? He certainly didn't find them on his own. He told me he didn't take time to research the blog. When I told him about some stories I've broken or added to which have actually been picked up by the MSM, he didn't have an inkling.
So how did he get ahold of those 3 or 4 posts by me and AZ Blue Meanie to write about?
Here, I'm going to indulge in the kind of speculation Brodesky criticizes in his column.
I think he either heard people in the newsroom criticizing BfA, or he was given the column topic as an assignment. The Star clearly hates the story about Brewer's possible biopsy for thyroid cancer which I have posted about on numerous occasions, and Brodesky focused on one of those posts. They've given the story minimal coverage but have rushed to write about Brewer's non-denial denials. ("I'm in excellent health. What did you say? Biopsy? No comment. I'm in excellent health.") And current members of the Star staff have been upset about some of the things written about them in the blog, not to mention former staffers.
So my speculation is, someone on staff suggested Brodesky write about blogs, focusing on BfA, or someone on the publisher/editor end gave him the topic as an assignment. If I'm right and Brodesky accepted the suggestion or the assignment to write on a topic he doesn't have enough knowledge to write about in his personal column which is supposed to reflect his personal, but informed, views, that's an embarrassment to him and to the paper.
Yes, this is speculation, but now I'm going to sound like a journalist for a minute. Before Brodesky's column was published, I left a voice message on his Star telephone telling him about my speculation and asking him to respond. As they say in the news biz, Brodesky has not returned my call.
Brodesky has my home phone and my email — and he has the comments section of the blog. If my speculation is incorrect and Brodesky wants to contact me and set me straight, I would be happy to post a correction. That's what we do here on BfA. We try our damndest to get it right, and when we're told we've gotten it wrong, we post corrections. That's one way we let our readers know they can trust what they read here. They can trust it to be partisan, but factually accurate.
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What the Daily Star “opinion” writer complained of as to your post about Jan Brewer is not “speculation and innuendo” but rather inductive reasoning. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php
If you were working for me as a lawyer and deposing Jan Brewer with the strings of evidence you had, i.e., a statement from a credible award-winning journalist about a specific medical treatment and a photo of that medical treatment that appears to fit that statement, I would expect you to aggressively pursue a line of deposition questioning to drill down and exhaust all the facts to tie those strings of evidence together. If it comes to nothing, fine. More often than not it will lead somewhere.
What I would not tolerate from you is simply accepting a denial at face value. But this is what modern journalism does: reporters take a statement from each side and present it as a he said/she said narrative in the supposed interest of being “fair and balanced” and in the process obfuscate any factual reporting with conflicting opinion. It is up to the reader to decide who is telling the truth — and the reader often lacks sufficient information or knowledge to make an informed decision.
Mr. Brodesky expressed a strong opinion (blogs just trade in innuendo and speculation, therefore they are not worthy of paying attention to), but he doesn’t have nearly enough support to back it up, and the evidence he does use is not nearly strong enough or representative enough of the facts to support his conclusion. So, using his own standards of journalism, he failed miserably. Quite ironic.
If he was a student in Science class, the teacher would tell him to go back and redesign the experiment, run it all over again, then write a new lab report. If he was in English class, he would score “3” in ideas, which is the equivalent of about a C-, and doesn’t meet the state standards for a student in Arizona.
Brodesky didn’t analyze facts and then draw a conclusion. He obviously already had a conclusion and then cherry-picked a few facts to support it. Problem is, there is a very deep body of work present at The Blog For Arizona: Mr. Safier and Michael Bryan have been reporting for a long time about local politicians “hiding in their bunker” (Antenori, Melvin et. al — those who won’t talk to the printed press), the factual and logical nightmares foisted upon us by the slick libertarians at the GoldWater Institiute (e.g., “one beaurocrat for every teacher”), the shenanigans behind many local charter schools (have you seen how much money they rake in!?), the Star changing headlines and editing stories submitted by the AP or other news services in order to slant the “news” in a certain direction. They also link to many local and national news stories in various publications, from the NYTimes, Washington Post, Arizona Republic and they always report on what gets written about in the Star and how stories are presented. And AZBlueMeanie deftly criticizes state politicians, like Russell Pearce, by pointing out the error of their ways. For example, he has written about the history of tax cuts in this state and the subsequent budget deficits, how the tax system has been transformed from an effective progressive system to an ineffective regressive system, and the legal problems with SB1070 (e.g., changing the threshold of 4th Amendment from “probable cause” to the much lower “reasonable suspicion”), how John McCain has changed his mind so many times it’s impossible to know who he really is anymore, etc, etc, etc. The Blog of Arizona does express strong opinions about political issues, but they always back them up with enough evidence to make a strong case.
Mr. Brodsky also has a strong opinion, but he doesn’t have nearly enough support to back it up, and the evidence he does use is not nearly strong enough or representative enough of the facts to support his conclusion. No, Mr. Brodesky’s article didn’t work, and I agree with Mr. Safier that he just embarrassed himself.