Remembering the day the earth shook

It was 14 seconds I’ll never forget.

Twenty years ago, on Oct. 17, 1989, I was sitting at the San Jose Mercury News city desk, revved up to coordinate the news coverage of Game 3 of the Bay Area World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants. As pre-game coverage clicked on at 5 p.m. our reporters were all in place. Four minutes later the TV went dead and newsroom’s concrete floor rippled like a ship’s wake.

We all dove. As I lay beneath my desk, legs protruding, I wondered whether the newsroom ceiling would collapse. The room rumbled, but I heard just one voice, that of another assistant city editor.

“Oh my God,” she said softly.

And then the wave stopped.

That night and in the months that followed, the staff at the San Jose Mercury News was at its best. The newspaper had had the foresight in the earthquake-prone San Francisco Bay Area to have a back-up generator. So we published the next morning. Reporters worked deep into the night, even as they worried about families unable to call in or homes sitting near the fault lines everyone in that part of the world can map in their mind. Darkness soon fell and on the blackened streets of San Francisco, fires burned. The Cypress Viaduct in Oakland had collapsed, killing dozens (the count kept changing). We began getting patchwork reports of devastation in the mountainous communities to the south of San Jose.

Late that night, the editors huddled around the news desk to debate the front page headline. They considered “The Big One,” then wisely discarded it. This quake, reported at 7.0 on the Richter Scale, didn’t approach the magnitude of the one that devastated San Francisco in 1906. I can’t recall what headline we actually did use. I can’t imagine readers much cared.

For weeks we worked 60, 70 and 80 hours. When the walls swayed – and they did often at first – we weren’t sure whether we were feeling aftershocks or fatigue signals from our overworked brains. First came the dramatic stories about the dead, the damage and the survivors, heroic rescues, odd and sometimes calamitous coincidences. Then came the long haul: rebuilding devastated homes and businesses, sorting through insurance claims and fraud, reviewing weaknesses in building structures, roadways and bridges.

Kathy and I seriously considered moving back East. For a half year I wouldn’t drive the long bridge expanse across the San Francisco Bay. For awhile, I didn’t stop beneath bridges either. But we stayed. At year’s end, the city desk staff turned from breaking news to a project “We Are Not Prepared,” to identify and push for changes in safety and engineering standards and emergency management systems.

Four month later our city desk staff won a Pulitzer for general news reporting. After the announcement, many of us took our soaking in the moat surrounding the paper as a badge of honor.

My family lived nearly five more years in the Bay Area. I got to participate in other big stories and projects. But none made me prouder to be in the news business or that particular news room than the months that followed the earthquake.

The paper’s Pulitzer made for some pretty gaudy icing, but that’s not why. Looking back on that day and the months that followed, what leaves me nostalgic is that the earthquake allowed us to help our neighbors and communities. It also forged a community in a once-proud newsroom that by all accounts today is a mere shell of itself. It wasn’t something any of us merely covered. It is something we lived and shared.

When faux news obscures the real thing

This post appeared first at http://TrueSlant.com, where I am keeping an active blog. See other recent writing there.

10/16/09

Democrats are "increasingly confident" they'll have the votes to pass health care legislation, my morning Boston Globe reports. That's why, as a proponent of reform, I'm nervous. As health care heads down the stretch, I'm bracing for the next big diversion, watching for how the media respond.

The health insurance industry tried to light a rocket last week when, at the 11th hour before the Senate Finance Committee vote on Sen. Max Baucus' proposal, it released a report warning the plan would send family premiums through the roof. That diversion fizzled, perhaps because its timing was so evidently cynical.

But perhaps it fizzled for another reason: It wasn't whacko enough. If there's one thing yet another summer of silly stories reminded us it's that American conspiracy theorists like their faux news diversions to be really faux -- and that cable news knows it well. That's part of why death panels were such a hit for awhile, along with the birther movement that preceded it. Those charges were loony enough charges to really get some traction on TV.

Meanwhile, anyone trying to get a firm grip on the health care debate has struggled to break through the 24-7 noise. As recently as late last month a New York Times/CBS News poll found a majority of those polled remained confused about health care. I'll bet that hasn't changed much.

Granted. Health care reform is complicated. And the multiple bills flying around make it more so. But the news media can't take a free pass here.

Hours of over-the-top coverage of the off-the-wall inevitably divert attention from real issues. And that, I'm quite sure, is precisely what opponents on the right still want. By raising false charges, they often succeed in coaxing a media fearful of seeming biased, eager to boost ratings, or both, to obscure the real debate.

This isn't an issue of ideology. If Democrats were better at tossing around mean-spirited, specious attacks they, too, might seize the day. Obama, for his part, could counter this trend by rapidly counter-attacking each attack and hammering the message he began to sharpen in his speech to Congress.

But even if Democratic tentativeness has made matters worse, the media's job is to cover more than just what's lobbed at them. News coverage involves choice every day. And in a profit-driven 24-7 news environment, news executives often choose with the knowledge that scaring people sells almost as well as sex. (Just witness this week's saga of the missing boy and the drifting helium balloon.)

Though sexy and scary stories sell, however, they also distract from a core mission of news – to inform, to expose the public to an intelligent range of views, to put a variety of rational options before it.

"Fair and balanced” news meant something different before Fox News co-opted the slogan. To be fair, I was taught 35 years ago, a reporter should check his own biases and gather enough facts to glean what truth (with a small t) they appear to point toward. The weight of evidence would dictate the relative balance of viewpoints, not some formulaic "he said, she said" equation. What gets covered and how it gets covered in other words, should be proportionate to the evidence, not to who shouts the loudest.

Perhaps "no drama" Obama is right. Perhaps the shouters, lacking substance, eventually run out of steam. I hope so.

Because when the news becomes merely noise it makes the already difficult task of governing almost impossible.

That is why I'm bracing for the next big diversion, the next effort to stop health care reform by peddling nonsense. Stories of lost kids and balloons can only last so long. And the mavens of 24-7 news are always on the lookout for raw meat.

10/16/09

Democrats are "increasingly confident" they'll have the votes to pass health care legislation, my morning Boston Globe reports. That's why, as a proponent of reform, I'm nervous. As health care heads down the stretch, I'm bracing for the next big diversion, watching for how the media respond.

The health insurance industry tried to light a rocket last week when, at the 11th hour before the Senate Finance Committee vote on Sen. Max Baucus' proposal, it released a report warning the plan would send family premiums through the roof. That diversion fizzled, perhaps because its timing was so evidently cynical.

But perhaps it fizzled for another reason: It wasn't whacko enough. If there's one thing yet another summer of silly stories reminded us it's that American conspiracy theorists like their faux news diversions to be really faux -- and that cable news knows it well. That's part of why death panels were such a hit for awhile, along with the birther movement that preceded it. Those charges were loony enough charges to really get some traction on TV.

Meanwhile, anyone trying to get a firm grip on the health care debate has struggled to break through the 24-7 noise. As recently as late last month a New York Times/CBS News poll found a majority of those polled remained confused about health care. I'll bet that hasn't changed much.

Granted. Health care reform is complicated. And the multiple bills flying around make it more so. But the news media can't take a free pass here.

Hours of over-the-top coverage of the off-the-wall inevitably divert attention from real issues. And that, I'm quite sure, is precisely what opponents on the right still want. By raising false charges, they often succeed in coaxing a media fearful of seeming biased, eager to boost ratings, or both, to obscure the real debate.

This isn't an issue of ideology. If Democrats were better at tossing around mean-spirited, specious attacks they, too, might seize the day. Obama, for his part, could counter this trend by rapidly counter-attacking each attack and hammering the message he began to sharpen in his speech to Congress.

But even if Democratic tentativeness has made matters worse, the media's job is to cover more than just what's lobbed at them. News coverage involves choice every day. And in a profit-driven 24-7 news environment, news executives often choose with the knowledge that scaring people sells almost as well as sex. (Just witness this week's saga of the missing boy and the drifting helium balloon.)

Though sexy and scary stories sell, however, they also distract from a core mission of news – to inform, to expose the public to an intelligent range of views, to put a variety of rational options before it.

"Fair and balanced” news meant something different before Fox News co-opted the slogan. To be fair, I was taught 35 years ago, a reporter should check his own biases and gather enough facts to glean what truth (with a small t) they appear to point toward. The weight of evidence would dictate the relative balance of viewpoints, not some formulaic "he said, she said" equation. What gets covered and how it gets covered in other words, should be proportionate to the evidence, not to who shouts the loudest.

Perhaps "no drama" Obama is right. Perhaps the shouters, lacking substance, eventually run out of steam. I hope so.

Because when the news becomes merely noise it makes the already difficult task of governing almost impossible.

That is why I'm bracing for the next big diversion, the next effort to stop health care reform by peddling nonsense. Stories of lost kids and balloons can only last so long. And the mavens of 24-7 news are always on the lookout for raw meat.

Come visit my new blog at trueslant.com

I've begun a new blog, called News prints, at trueslant.com. Please stop by. I'll be doing all my blogging there for the foreseeable future so I will no longer be posting to this blog. The link is below.

trueslant.