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ERIC PFANNER
British newspapers sometimes give away CDs or DVDs in the hope that readers enticed by free copies of Batman 26 might cast a passing glance at the headlines,too.
The Daily Telegraph has reversed that approach to spectacular effect. Instead of giving away a disk,it acquired one or more containing the expense records of members of Parliament. As it splashes tales of taxpayer-financed duck islands and moat-cleaning across its front pages,conventional wisdom of the news business has gone belly up.
The revelation is that old-fashioned scoops still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era,exclusives are not worth pursuing. Instead,they have shifted toward analysis or opinion.
But The Telegraphs exclusives,serialised like popular 19th century novels,have made a big difference at the newsstand. According to unaudited industry figures,The Daily Telegraph sold about 900,000 additional copies in the first two weeks of its reports some days,its circulation jumped more than 10 per cent from the official April level of about 818,000.
The Telegraphs sourcing methods have also attracted attention. According to newspaper reports,it paid for the information perhaps 90,000,or 145,000. The Telegraph has neither confirmed nor denied these reports.
One of the great rules of journalism is that you dont discuss your sources,so long as the information is reliable and in the public interest, said Benedict Brogan,assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph.
Checkbook journalism is common among British tabloids but has been frowned upon at more serious papers like The Telegraph. Some analysts say it may be time for a rethinkthat perhaps,the ends justify the means.
Wrote Roy Greenslade in The Evening Standard,a London paper: If the documents are genuine,it is self-evident that the information itself cannot be tainted by the payment.
The information came to light only after a multi-year freedom-of-information campaign by Heather Brooke,a US freelance journalist. The expense records were passed by an unidentified whistleblower to John Wick,a former member of Britains Special Air Service who now runs a private security firm. Wick contacted Henry Gewanter,a US PRO in London,who handled the negotiations with The Telegraph,having offered the information to other newspapers.
This was clearly the biggest exclusive that any journalist on any newspaper Ive ever talked to would ever get, Gewanter said. And yet I had to go to more than one newspaper. I was amazed at the lack of vision.
There is another aspect to the story: the thin skins that Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay,the owners of The Telegraph,have shown when confronted with criticism of the papers reporting. The Barclayses,twin brothers,were not pleased when one of the subjects of The Telegraphs expense exposes,Nadine Dorries,wrote on her blog that the Barclays thought neither Labour nor the Conservatives was sufficiently opposed to Britains membership in the European Union. As a result,the paper had set upon a deliberate course to destabilise Parliament.
The Barclays contacted their lawyers who wrote to Dorries to demand a retraction. The blog briefly disappeared,only to return later with the passage in question removed.
And they only listened
MARTIN FACKLER
When Tokyo prosecutors arrested an aide to a prominent opposition political leader in March,they touched off a damaging scandal just when the Liberal Democratic Party seemed to face defeat in coming elections. Many Japanese cried foul,but you would not know that from the coverage by Japans big newspapers and TV networks.
They mostly reported at face value a stream of anonymous allegations,some of them thinly veiled leaks from within the investigation involving the opposition leader,Ichiro Ozawa. After weeks of negative publicity,Ozawa resigned as head of the opposition Democratic Party,last week.
Scholars and former prosecutors complain there has been a failure of the news media to press for answers,particularly when the nation may be on the verge of replacing a half-century of Liberal Democratic rule with more competitive two-party politics.
The mass media are failing to tell the people what is at stake, said Terumasa Nakanishi at Kyoto University.
Japanese journalists acknowledge their coverage so far has been harsh on Ozawa and generally positive toward the investigation. But they bridle at the suggestion that they are just following the prosecutors lead,or just repeating information leaked to them.
The Asahi Shimbun has never run an article based solely on a leak from prosecutors, the newspaper,one of Japans biggest dailies,said in a written reply to The New York Times.
Still,journalists admit that their coverage raises questions about the Japanese medias independence,and not for the first time. Big news organisations here have long been accused of being too cozy with centres of power.
The media should be watchdogs on authority, said Yasuhiko Tajima,a journalism professor at Sophia University in Tokyo,but they act more like authoritys guard dogs.
Cozy ties with government agencies are institutionalised in Japans so-called press clubs. Critics have long said this system leads to bland,official line reporting. Journalists say government officials sometimes try to force them to toe the line.
Last month,the Tokyo Shimbun was banned from talking with Tokyo prosecutors for three weeks after printing a story about a governing-party lawmaker who had received donations from the same company linked to Ozawa. Crossing the prosecutors is one of the last media taboos, said Haruyoshi Seguchi,the papers chief reporter.
The news medias failure to act as a check has allowed prosecutors to act freely without explaining themselves to the public,said Nobuto Hosaka,a member of Parliament for the Social Democratic Party.
He said he believed Ozawa was singled out because of the Democratic Partys campaign pledges to curtail Japans powerful bureaucrats,including the prosecutors. The Tokyo prosecutors office turned down an interview request for this story because The Times is not in its press club.
But that does not explain why so few reporters delved deeply into allegations that the company also sent money to Liberal Democratic lawmakers. The answer is that following the prosecutors lead was easier than risking their wrath by doing original reporting. Even some former prosecutors,who once benefited from such favourable coverage,have begun criticising the media.
