COMM 150: 'Don't touch my junk [journalism]' hyping body-scan story? FOR CLASS WEDNESDAY

For class discussion (on line) Wednesday ...

Featured on The Daily Beast website today (Monday) was a take-down by media critic Howard Kurtz, who finds junk journalism -- i.e. the journalistic equivalent of junk food -- in the coverage of the use of body scanners and pat-down searches during security checks at 70 airports.

Kurtz, who recently joined the Daily Beast after 10 years as the highly respected media writer for The Washington Post, says the story is hyped:

You might get the impression, from the way the coverage has achieved warp speed, that millions of airline passengers are being groped and humiliated by heavy-handed security guards.

From network newscasts to local TV, from newspaper front pages to a blur of Web headlines, it seems untold numbers of women are having their breasts touched and untold numbers of men are feeling the intrusive hands of government guards near their packages.

Actually, that’s far from true. Despite some outrageous incidents involving idiotic conduct, with 2 million passengers screened each day, more than 99 percent are unaffected by the new policy.

After giving some examples of hyperactive TSA guards, he adds:

The obtuseness of these TSA clowns boggles the mind. And in the modern media world, anecdotal accounts rule. Perhaps some customers, not the disabled ones, were being oversensitive; doesn’t matter. We all identify with bedraggled passengers, having removed their shoes and belts, having dumped their drinks and packed their tiny toothpaste tubes, being oppressed by a rigid and inflexible system. But that doesn’t mean the excesses are widespread.

After some examples of hyperventilating coverage, Kurtz concludes:

Whether all this scanning and probing and patting down is enhancing our collective security is very much in doubt. Pistole repeatedly points to the Christmas Day underwear bomber, and who among us wouldn’t submit to additional inconvenience if it meant stopping an extremist from bringing down a plane? A CBS poll earlier this month found that 81 percent of those questioned support the TSA’s use of full-body scanners.

But an ABC/Washington Post survey out Monday says half the respondents think the new pat-down techniques go too far. (After the overwhelmingly hostile coverage, it's surprising that figure is only 50 percent.)

On the other hand, it seems absurd to be screening grandmothers and young kids, and has this elaborate and expensive enterprise caught a single terrorist?

No self-respecting man wants a hyperactive security guard touching his junk. But I’ve about had it with media types who insist on turning this into a junk story.

Kurtz' writeup raises ethical issues. If his summary of the coverage is accurate, and I think it is judging by what I've seen on the web, there are ethical issues in the way this story is being handled.

Your assignment: Read Kurtz' story in the Daily Beast (linked above) and re-read the SPJ Code of Ethics (linked here). How do you rate the ethics of the journalists whom Kurtz quotes? Which specific principles apply? (By specific, I don't mean the broad rules like "Seek the Truth ..." but the detailed statements like "Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.") Post your answers, about 250- to 500 words, as comments to this post.

I think you'll find the coverage to be a mixed bag. For example, Juan Williams' remarks on The O’Reilly Factor are quoted, “Prepare for a travel nightmare if you're getting on a plane to go see your family for Thanksgiving ... Twenty-four million Americans will go through a living hell just because they want to visit their loved ones!” A little over the top, right? But Williams was on a clearly identified Fox News opinion show. Was he misrepresenting the facts or stating his opinion in a colorful way? Sometimes these things aren't clear-cut. Open two windows. Read Kurtz' column, and do a point-by-point evaluation of the coverage quoted in it. The exercise should take about 50 minutes, about the same time as a class period.