COVERING THE COVERAGE

It's pretty predictable that in times of major tragedies, the coverage of the tragedy itself is going to come in for plenty of criticism.

That happened fairly rapidly in the Virginia Tech massacre, first directed at cable television's CNN for airing cellphone images that recorded the sound of the gunman's weapons discharging repeatedly. The brief film aired throughout the day the carnage occurred.

But CNN didn't get a fraction of the scorn that was heaped on NBC a couple of days later when that network, having received a package that Cho Seung Hui mailed between his bouts of mayhem, actually put Cho's videos of himself on the air. For much of the news cycle on Thursday, NBC's decision became the story.

I'm not a big fan of watching psychos defending their twisted actions. For that matter, I don't care much for television news these days. Years ago, TV news was much more substantive. But let me throw in my two cents worth: Had NBC not shown the Cho videos, just how long do you think it would have taken for the material to start appearing on YouTube? A day maybe? Perhaps not even that long.

So I'm pretty contemptuous of making a network's news judgment the issue on a story of this magnitude. Goodness knows there are plenty of other issues to dwell on. And, I suspect, we will be dwelling on them for some time to come.

Still, the question has to be raised every time we have an incident of this nature: How much coverage is enough?

Many editors operate on the theory that you can't get enough, at least in the initial days of the event. Readers and viewers crave details of the tragedy; it is the media's job to provide them.

Others think there can be too much coverage, especially from the electronic media. After all, in the week of the Virginia Tech tragedy, hundreds were killed by bombs in Baghdad, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made his much-anticipated appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and, in what surely would have been banner news in a less-competitive environment, the Supreme Court upheld a restriction on abortion for the first time since its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the procedure.

If you look at most papers, I think you'll see an attempt to hit a happy medium. And this is a healthy give and take. As an aside, let me just sneak in a few words about where commentary coverage belongs in this discussion.

Normally, I think the expansion of commentary over the last few years has been due to the fact that so much of the news lends itself to expert analysis and opinion. Mass murder, as much as anything else, belongs in that category.

Yet in a case such as the Virginia Tech shootings, I think you rush commentary into print or on the air at your peril. We may know the initial facts -- 33 dead -- relatively early. What we don't know is much, if any, of the context. That, as we've seen this week from Blacksburg, Va., is something that will be developing for weeks, perhaps even months.

Then there is the what-do-you-know factor. Too often, we know very little. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson got in his car Monday afternoon and drove the four hours to Blacksburg, feeling he could not do justice to a column unless he was on the scene. We endorsed that thinking.

As more details emerged, other columnists -- Richard Cohen, Marie Cocco, Charles Krauthammer and E.J. Dionne Jr. -- also weighed in, drawing on their own areas of expertise to offer their thoughts and analysis. Tom Shales provided much-needed critiques of television's efforts to cover the story.

Modern-day news commentary developed out of a need to provide background on major issues in a fast-paced world. So far, this is where commentary belongs concerning the Virginia Tech story -- in the background.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

THE SAD SAGA OF DON IMUS

This story, depressingly all-too-familiar in my view, had all the elements of a typical slow-news-cycle event -- an outrageous and off-the-wall comment that evoked both racism and sexism; a sufficient period for the offensive remarks to be aired over and over on cable TV news shows and the Internet; the predictable and often sanctimonious demands for "justice" by those who appoint themselves arbiters of such cultural clashes; true hurt and admirable poise by the victims; and a degree of discipline meted out by the talk-show host's employers.

Oh, and did I mention news?

When you get right down to it, the one true important part concerning Don Imus' boorish on-the-air behavior was whether his employers -- CBS Radio and the MSNBC cable television network -- were going to tolerate it. It certainly was news when both employers decided, almost 24 hours apart, that indeed they would not.

And in truth, it would have been news if they had decided the other way. Yet the firings, especially CBS' decision late last Thursday afternoon, had a degree of finality that suffocated much of the posturing and speculation and brought this sad saga, at least for most news editors, to closure.

But, as some opinion page editors discovered as the news broke that CBS had cut Imus off, closure is difficult once you've already closed your pages.

"OK, so who else out there just had to rip up a perfectly good op-ed page because one or more columns are now outdated?" wondered Jane Nicholes of the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., on an e-mail listserv operated by the National Conference of Editorial Writers. "And has anyone looked at all those weekend Imus columns already filed?

"Why don't people get fired in the morning?"

Nicholes raises a good point. After MSNBC showed him the door (also in a late-afternoon move on Wednesday), it was pretty much an even-money bet that Imus wouldn't last long with his gig at CBS. In the news business, you don't need a Geiger counter to tell when someone has become radioactive. So why wait to make the announcement, pushing it back to a time when some editors might be beyond deadline?

News happens, is probably the best reply. The reason we can't predict the timing of relatively predictable events makes such events, by definition, news. If we could eliminate the suspense, would anything be news?

We at The Writers Group, and I'm sure at other syndicates, had to react much like Nicholes did when the news came in. We had four columns, by Eugene Robinson, Kathleen Parker, Ruben Navarrette Jr. and Ellen Goodman, that would need to be quickly updated to reflect the firing. Writers would have to be contacted, new language would have to be inserted into the columns, and new versions sent to clients -- with little time to spare.

This isn't as rare as it might seem. We routinely send "writethrus" to clients whenever updated information is required in a column. In the Imus case, it would have been professionally irresponsible not to try and get the news into the columns, despite the late hour of the newsbreak. Readers, after all, don't care if an editorial page they are looking at closed four to five hours ahead of Page One; they expect accuracy on whatever page they are reading. And editors are correct to demand the updates.

"I now see a flurry of wire advisories to (the) effect that our syndicated friends left and right are rapidly updating their Imus columns," Nicholes messaged the NCEW listserv about 45 minutes after her first post.

Mission accomplished.

Writers Group client services coordinator Julian Kivett caught Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's lunchtime appearance before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. His report follows.

JUSTICE BREYER SPEAKS AT ASNE
by Julian Kivett

Stephen Breyer was the first Supreme Court justice to appear at ASNE since Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1986. Breyer, who was appointed in 1994 by President Clinton, sat down with Jess Bravin, the Supreme Court correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, to discuss concerns over the reduced coverage of the courts by the media. In Breyer’s estimation, coverage of the court systems is waning and he would like to see the media increase their coverage to help the public gain a clearer understanding of the functions of the high court, one of three main branches of the government.

Breyer maintains that due to the decline in the number of reporters dedicated to covering the courts, coverage is regularly left to beat reporters who often have too many stories on their plate to dedicate themselves to covering all the intricacies of a court case. When asked specifically whether there should be television coverage of Supreme Court proceedings in order to raise public awareness, Breyer said that the oral argument (the part that would be televised) encompasses a mere 5 percent of a case. He added that before a hearing, he reads nearly 12 briefs (which he was careful to note are anything but brief) that accompany a proceeding. Even with the help of his clerks in breaking down and evaluating the briefs -- the justices still have an ample number of questions before a proceeding can commence. Breyer explained that the first 30 minutes of a proceeding are dedicated to allowing the justices to ask questions and fill in any gaps in the case, not for the attorneys to make a case or introduce new arguments. “It’s chaos,” he said.

Moreover, Breyer was asked about the high potential for “showing off” for the cameras, which he asserts would ultimately detract from the case and lead to superfluous arguments. After they field their questions, the justices confer among themselves and then write their own opinions in favor or dissention. Breyer acknowledged that televising the oral arguments would not accurately reflect all the effort and deliberation that goes into deciding a case

In terms of newspaper coverage, Breyer argues that reporters need to account for the fact that the public is willing to support any number of differing opinions. It is the responsibility of the newspaper to explain these opinions. He says that in 5-4 decisions, “we in the five know that the four are not out of their minds.” Equally, when the court decides not to hear a case, it is generally because the justices do not deem it to be a federal issue that would require a uniform national rule. “We’re not final because we are infallible,” he said. “We’re infallible because we’re final.”