March 29, 2024

The Public Editor: Making Sense of a Sensational Case

These days, the beast has been ravenous for the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager. The case was swollen with confusing evidence, Florida’s liberal self-defense laws and deep-seated racial tension. Cable coverage has been round the clock.

While hardly going the way of CNN’s near total obsession, The Times gave the Zimmerman trial a great deal of daily attention, including frequently updated courtroom coverage on the Web.

Decisions about the amount of coverage to give a high-profile trial are always subjective. But it is notable — and it opens The Times to criticism — that this one got the kind of day-in, day-out attention that The Times did not deem worthwhile in a pair of other important cases this year: the trial of the abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell and the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked vast amounts of classified government documents. (Although the Gosnell trial did seem to get short shrift at first, I felt it was given adequate coverage by the end. But I have thought all along that the Manning matter deserves more sustained evidence of The Times’s interest.)

The Zimmerman trial coverage was solid. But foremost, The Times has showed its trademark strength with in-depth, enterprising pieces exploring the broader issues of this crime and its aftermath.

Last week, for example, Lizette Alvarez wrote skillfully about the racial issues that had emerged, noting that “race lingers awkwardly on the sidelines, scarcely mentioned but impossible to ignore.” That article appeared on the front page, the first during the trial to do so.

In the first weeks after Mr. Martin was killed, on Feb. 26, 2012, The Times lagged behind, seeming not to recognize the broader implications and the way the teenager’s death had captured public interest. But on April 2 it published an exhaustive and well-written account by four reporters that started on the front page and filled two full pages inside. It explored the polarizing effect of the shooting. Soon after that, a front-page piece by Serge Kovaleski investigated the police missteps after the shooting. (Some critics of The Times believe its motto should not be “All the News That’s Fit to Print” but rather “More, Later.”)

Given the enormous overload of coverage elsewhere, The Times tried to provide something distinctive. Charles Strum, the deputy national editor handling the story, told me that his aim had been “to bring more light than heat, because, over all, this is a situation with more heat than light.” While editing articles in the New York office — most of them written by Ms. Alvarez, the Miami bureau chief — he spent his days wearing headphones so that he could listen to live streaming of the trial.

“There are a lot of accusations, a lot of misinformation and a lot of conspiracy theorizing,” he said.

The smallest points were scrutinized. Why, for example, did The Times use so many descriptions of Mr. Zimmerman’s ethnicity? Michael G. Brautigam of Brooklyn is one of many readers who commented on how The Times described Mr. Zimmerman. He wrote to me: “If memory serves, George Zimmerman has been described in a significantly different way each day of the week.” A week ago Monday he was labeled “half Hispanic,” the next day as “half Peruvian,” a day later as “self-described Hispanic.” Earlier, he was described as a “white Hispanic.”

I asked Ms. Alvarez to explain. “It’s been a struggle all along,” she said. “If he were black or if his name was Rodriguez instead of Zimmerman, this would have been a completely different situation.” The case would not have had its racial flash point, she said. In a nation where a blend of race and ethnicity are more and more the norm, the labeling struggle is an effort to note that Mr. Zimmerman shares in that mixture more than his name alone indicates.

Separately from news coverage, some readers complained about several Op-Ed columns by Charles Blow, finding them one-sided, with a particular complaint about one that appeared on July 3, comparing Mr. Zimmerman’s videotaped re-enactment with his written and spoken statements. Richard Murphy of Fairfield, Conn., wrote: “I realize that Mr. Blow is an opinion columnist, but does The Times really want to put Mr. Zimmerman on trial in its pages? Mr. Blow isn’t reporting, he is deliberately attempting to discredit Zimmerman, to convince people of his guilt.”

I sent this complaint to Mr. Blow and asked him to respond. “I simply raised questions about inconsistencies in George Zimmerman’s accounts of his struggle with Trayvon Martin,” he said.

Looking back over the columns that Mr. Blow has written on the case since last year, I found them generally thoughtful, if clearly sympathetic to the Martin family. The column that Mr. Murphy cited may have come close to the limits of fair comment, taking on a prosecutorial tone. If you believed the medical examiner, the columnist wrote, “the struggle simply couldn’t have happened as Zimmerman described it.” Those kinds of judgments might have been best left to the jury. But columnists are allowed wide leeway, and even in this instance I found Mr. Blow within his rights.

The Times was slow off the mark on this story, and on some early developments, it let the local media break the news. But over all, it has done its job, satisfying interest without sensationalizing, covering the trial with a measured tone, and providing depth and perspective — valuable commodities on a story all too capable of creating hysteria.

Mr. Strum, however, knows there are ways in which any coverage, no matter how thoughtful, must be found wanting.

“This trial brings up all the old pain of every violent racial crime that’s ever happened — with questions of who’s the aggressor, whether a fair trial is possible, whether there is such a thing as equal justice in America,” he told me. “The questions are out there, and unfortunately, they won’t be answered.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/public-editor/making-sense-of-a-sensational-case.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Cheers Are Few as Dow Jones Average Hits Milestone

The oldest and most popular gauge of the stock market on Tuesday surged past the nominal high it last reached more than five years ago, before the financial crisis hit with full force.

In the past, such a recovery would have led to celebrations on Wall Street and spread optimism about the economy. But the gain by the Dow Jones industrial average — the stocks of 30 American corporate giants like Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil and Microsoft — was a more downbeat event.

Wall Street executives were not dismissing the rally out of hand, but after several years of turbulence they were not cracking open the Champagne either.

“The market reflects an improving economy in the U.S. and abroad,” said James P. Gorman, the chief executive of the Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley. “It helps individuals through their 401(k)’s and other investments. That being said, it has been a very fast move, and prudent investors would be well served to tread carefully and look for improving economic evidence to support any moves to higher levels.”

It has taken nearly five and half years for the Dow to get this far. Now there are concerns about whether the forces that have driven the market rally — the huge stimulus actions by the Federal Reserve and banner corporate profits — will be sufficient to push it higher.

Ordinary investors, who have largely sat on the sidelines of the market, will be asking themselves whether it is time to start investing in stocks again, given the gains that have taken place.

“What’s amazing about this bull market is that people still don’t think it’s real,” said Richard Bernstein, chief executive of Richard Bernstein Advisors, a money management firm. “We think this could be the biggest bull market of our careers.”

The Dow broke through with a gain of 125.95 points, or 0.9 percent, closing at 14,253.77 on Tuesday. Since hitting a low in March 2009, with the panic of the financial crisis still fresh, the market measure has more than doubled.

The recovery is remarkable because the American housing market remains weak, Europe still has moments of severe instability, and fiscal battles drag on in Washington.

Using other yardsticks, however, the performance of the blue-chip Dow does not look quite as impressive.

The much broader Standard Poor’s 500-stock index, the benchmark favored by investment professionals, was slightly below its 2007 high even after it climbed 14.59 points on Tuesday, nearly 1 percent, to 1,539.79. And when adjusted for inflation, both the Dow and the S. P. 500 were well below their levels at the start of the last decade.

The Nasdaq composite index also surged Tuesday, rising 42.10 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3,224.13, but it remains well below its 2000 high, when it topped 5,000.

Previous highs occurred when investors believed the economy could keep growing without any extraordinary assistance. By contrast, this rally has occurred on the back of enormous monetary stimulus by the Fed and the world’s other central banks.

Since the end of 2007, five major central banks have injected some $6 trillion into the global economy, according to figures from the Bank for International Settlements. This was done to prevent bank runs and revive economies.

As the stimulus forced down interest rates, it eventually whetted investors’ appetite for riskier assets like stocks.

“Central banks do matter. Central banks have always mattered,” said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff Associates, who started work as a Wall Street economist on the day the stock market crashed in 1987.

The looming question is what will happen when the Fed stops its stimulus. Mr. Rosenberg said that after the crisis the stock market declined sharply on two occasions when the Fed signaled that it might temper its monetary easing.

“In both cases, the Fed backtracked,” he said.

Susanne Craig, Nathaniel Popper and Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the recent increase of investment in equity funds. The correct figure was $55.1 billion flowing into equity funds in January and February, not $77 billion in January.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Eyeing 2012 Race, White House Presses Europe on Debt

Publicly, Obama administration officials talk only about the economic consequences of a potential debt conflagration in Europe. Privately, though, they are well aware that Europe’s success in dealing with the troubles — and the administration’s success in persuading them to do so — is arguably the single most important factor that will determine Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.

The American economy has shown signs of life recently, with talk of a double-dip recession fading and job growth picking up. The change has raised the prospect that the economy may not be quite the political weight around Mr. Obama’s neck in 2012 that his advisers had feared — unless Europe goes downhill. Mr. Obama’s aides realize that there is no easy way to plan a re-election strategy for one potential body blow: an implosion of the European currency. Such an event, experts say, would undoubtedly send the American unemployment rate higher and possibly induce another recession. Other than lobbying from the sidelines, Mr. Obama and his administration have little control over the situation.

“It’s certainly true that Europe is the gorilla in the room when people look at how the economy could affect the election,” one senior Obama adviser said, speaking on grounds of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Added Edwin M. Truman, former adviser to Mr. Geithner: “If the euro comes apart in a messy way — and it’s hard to imagine it will come apart in a nonmessy way — it would make the fall of 2008 look like a clambake.”

And so it is, Mr. Truman and others said, that Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy could have far more to say about who will be the next president of the United States than anyone thought.

For Mr. Obama, the change of fortune is stark. This is a president whose election was greeted in Europe with rapture; as a candidate, he visited both Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy in the summer of 2008, where he received welcomes more fitting to World War II heroes — including a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and an arrival ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris. France would be “delighted” with Mr. Obama’s election, Mr. Sarkozy gushed at the time.

Now, incongruously, it is Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy who could play a part in whether Mr. Obama wins re-election. The president himself has called Europe the “wild card” in the domestic economic recovery and his aides have privately expressed frustration at what they view as a passive response from European leaders to the debt crisis. Obama administration officials say that leaning on European leaders to get their house in order, as the president has been doing, is in best interest of the United States, and not something that Mr. Obama is doing for his own political benefit.

Mr. Geithner is in Europe this week in advance of the latest European summit meeting on Thursday that is meant to, yet again, try to deal with the debt issue. In a hurried, five-city, three-day tour, meeting with heads of state, Europe’s central banker and high-ranking economic officials, Mr. Geithner has quietly dispensed advice on the sovereign-debt crisis while pressing for decisive action for the good of the global economy.

Some prominent Europeans have bridled at what they consider the unsought American intervention. On Wednesday, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, told Reuters: “Geithner’s visit is inopportune. He should not be meddling in European affairs.” Cognizant, no doubt, of such sensitivities, Mr. Geithner has tried to chart a careful course in Europe this week, meeting behind the scenes, careful never to push or prescribe publicly, and so far taking only two questions from the news media. So far, European leaders have largely declined to yield to pressure from Obama administration officials who are advocating the same aggressive way that the United States responded to its own banking crisis in the fall of 2008 and through early 2009.

Frustrated Obama officials have been urging their European counterparts to move as much money as possible to prop up the debt of countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. “Ultimately, Europe will need to find a path that allows for stronger growth, but right now, the most important thing Europe can do for the global recovery is to manage this crisis successfully,” Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said in an interview.

Administration officials say that besides the potential for drying up demand in Europe for American goods and the looming potential of a European bank failure’s setting off another financial debacle, the European crisis could stymie growth not only in Europe, but also in emerging markets.

Anxiety over what could happen across the Atlantic, coupled with earlier undue optimism about the domestic economic recovery, has the White House nervous about trumpeting even modest good economic news for fear of a later downturn.

Democratic campaign strategists concede that a collapse of the euro would transform the political dynamic even as some see the president’s standing improving, enhancing the prospects of other Democratic candidates.

“It is absolutely an important assumption that if the economy really tanks, really tanks, as the result of strong headwinds coming from Europe, it would be a more challenging environment,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

While political analysts say Mr. Obama, as the incumbent, would bear the brunt of the political fallout of another economic crisis, some Republicans are fretting as well. At a Washington dinner party two weeks ago, David Smick, a Republican financial consultant, approached Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, with a provocative question. “What if I told you that given what’s happening in Europe, that whoever is president in 2013 might not see his party elected for another 30 years,” Mr. Smick told Mr. Rove, according to guests who were present. Mr. Rove, one guest said, “just listened.”

In an interview, Mr. Smick said that the European crisis, in his view, could eventually make another huge government bailout like the controversial bank rescue program of late 2008 and 2009 necessary. But most political analysts say that could be political suicide for the country’s leaders. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Obama was on the phone with Mrs. Merkel again. “As usual,” the White House said in a statement afterward, “the president expressed his appreciation for the efforts the chancellor and other European leaders are making to resolve the crisis.”

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Annie Lowery from Paris.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/world/europe/eyeing-2012-race-white-house-presses-europe-on-debt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Social Media Offer View Into U.A.W.’s Contract Talks

But like so much in the American auto industry, the old rules of bargaining no longer apply. In recent weeks, the U.A.W.’s Web site crashed in the hours after new contracts were unveiled with General Motors and the Ford Motor Company because so many workers were downloading them.

And how did many workers learn about the deals? Through Facebook pages and Twitter feeds kept up to date, often late into the night, by union staff members stationed in the halls outside the bargaining rooms. For the first time, the union also worked with each company to set up secure Web sites that allowed workers to receive e-mail updates.

“We may have gotten a lot more done in the past, and things would have gone smoother provided we had tools like this,” said General Holiefield, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of negotiations with Chrysler, who explained his approach to the talks in a four-minute video posted on YouTube and Facebook last week. “I couldn’t see going forward without using these.”

Talks with Chrysler have not concluded, though plant leaders from across the country have been summoned to Detroit for a meeting on Monday, signaling that discussions are in the final stages.

Some labor specialists say the wave of social networking this year has provided a bigger window than before into the negotiating process in Detroit, even though the talks still occur in private. Not only is communication more instant and accurate, but it has been extended to people previously left on the sidelines, including retirees.

“There is unprecedented openness about this process,” said Kristin Dziczek, labor analyst for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “You’re not getting the blow-by-blow, but they’re being much more open and transparent in communicating with their members and with the public, who, quite frankly, made a major investment in saving these companies.”

Through Facebook, autoworkers at plants in Kansas City, Mo., or Kokomo, Ind., have been able to voice concerns and ask questions directly to the bargaining teams, something they could not do in past years. Facebook helped workers at a Chrysler factory in Dundee, Mich., gather support before voting last month to join the national contract; they had previously been covered by a separate agreement that provided less job security.

While the U.A.W. worked to repair its Web site last week, it posted a summary of the Ford contract on Facebook, and received more than 500 comments in response. Since ratification meetings started, the moderators of the U.A.W.’s page for Ford workers have been busy answering requests to clarify sections of the contract language, sometimes responding within minutes.

In several instances, the union used Facebook to rebut rumors being disseminated on plant floors or in the news media, rather than allowing them to spread unchallenged. Shortly after a Detroit television station reported that workers would get a signing bonus of $7,500, a message posted on Facebook from Jimmy Settles, the union’s vice president in charge of Ford negotiations, described the report as inaccurate and “designed to intentionally create false expectations.” The finished deal included a bonus of $6,000 for most workers, some of whom had begun posting on Facebook that they would vote against any contract with a bonus of less than $15,000.

“It allowed us to get to the membership quickly,” Mr. Settles said in an interview. “The one thing we always had to combat was the expectations of our members. Historically, we didn’t have the apparatus to get that information out.”

The Chrysler team reacted similarly last week to quell speculation that the talks were headed to arbitration. Chrysler workers agreed in 2009, as part of the company’s government-aided bankruptcy, to give up their right to strike and that any impasse would be sent to binding arbitration, a result that both parties have said they want to avoid.

Art Reyes, the president of U.A.W. Local 651 in Flint, Mich., said Facebook had gone a long way toward “demystifying” the complex negotiations.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1f8f0dbe0d5388982eaccd6c57bc232d