Consider these May 19 captions under the same photograph from Agence France-Presse:
“Palestinians evacuated the body of a victim from a building in Nablus after Israeli war planes struck the West Bank town for the first time since the 1967 war. The airstrikes capped the deadliest day of violence in the Mideast this year.” (Star Tribune).
“Palestinians removing a body after a retaliatory jet attack by Israel killed eight police officers in Nablus.” (New York Times).
Kent Simon noted the difference. He wrote: “I am disturbed by the lack of precision in your report. Nowhere in the picture caption or in your story [from the New York Times] do we learn that those killed were all members of the Palestinian Authority’s security force, the de facto Palestinian Army.
“One is left with the impression that both the target and the victim were civilian, and that the attack was as indiscriminate as the suicide bombing that prompted it.”
The Times story quoted the governor of Nablus as saying all those killed were officers in a police unit.
The Star Tribune story, taken from the much longer Times story, did not include the Nablus governor’s statement, but it did say that Israel responded to the suicide bombing “by using U.S.-made F-16s to strafe Palestinian security headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza.” The story also said “one of the apparent targets of the air raid in Nablus, a Hamas commander who was being held in the police station prison by the Palestinian Authority, survived the attack.”
Comment: The Star Tribune caption needed the word “retaliatory” and a mention that the victims were police officers. Its story would have benefited from the quote from the Nablus governor.
Fairness
David Mallinder says the alleged White House vandalism by President Clinton’s staffers was “front page news for weeks,” but he said “very few saw the story” that the General Services Administration (GSA) investigation “determined that absolutely none of this occurred.”
He must be thinking about another newspaper. The charges never were on this newspaper’s front page.
On Jan. 26 a 10 inch story on Page A15 from the Los Angeles Times said “rumors abound: graffiti in the lavatories, sliced phone lines….”
A short item from the New York Times on Page A3 Jan. 28 said, without attribution, that “departing Clinton staffers also removed W keys from keyboards and filled copy machines with paper displaying less-than-flattering photographs of the new president.”
A May 19 article from the New York Times, stripped across the top of page A6, quoted a GSA official saying “there wasn’t any indication of real, significant, widespread damage.”
Off the mark
Robert Shaw said a May 11 headline, “Pregnant governor faces labor issues,” caught his eye but he questioned its relevance.
The story was about a “late-pregnancy complication: Massachusetts politics.” It was whether Gov. Jane Swift could constitutionally run a meeting of an advisory council by speakerphone.
Comment: A cutesy headline not applicable to the story.
Both begin with an ‘H’
Last Sunday’s article about celebrated violinist Jascha Heifetz included an intended testimonial from Carl Nashan, Minnesota Orchestra retiree: “He was the fiddler of the 20th century. … He wasn’t my favorite. That was [David] Oistrakh. But Horowitz was the most gifted.”
Comment: Surely the writer meant to type “Heifetz.”
