2014 NYT Michael Brown Profile Critique

A piece published on August 24, 2014 and written by John Eligon for The New York Times sparked debate, but debates and disagreements were commonplace in this particular case.

Over a year later, the name of the 18 year old man who was shot to death by a police officer in the middle of a street in Ferguson, MO is a household name. This name is Michael Brown. In the year that has past since the protests (peaceful and violent), riots, looting and general outrage of that particular time in our nation’s history has, in the most extreme cases, abated.  But where does that leave us? It leaves us with lingering emotions toward the case (whether one agrees with the court decision to not charge the police officer, Darren Wilson, or not). The name, Michael Brown is one that is equated with a turning point in cases of police brutality and racism.

During the media flurry and chaos in the weeks following the shooting, the New York Times published profiles of both Brown and Wilson, alongside one another on their front page. This seemingly reasonable and progressive move by the newspaper was met with extreme criticism of the way that Brown was depicted by the article’s author. Given, this was a profile, so the author, Eligon, was allowed more leeway than would have usually been accepted of a normal article. However, upon reading the profile it is quite clear that Eligon truly believes that Brown was the phrase that he used to describe him: “No Angel.” Although these two words are what began the outcry, they are merely a catchphrase for the rest of the profile’s tone.  Eligon pairs seemingly unimportant facts about Brown (for example, that he played the drums as a child) with hear-say from neighbors that claim to have known Brown for getting into fights. This poor attempt at objectivity is a recurring theme throughout the article. After briefly discussing his own family’s support and assurance that, “Michael was so cool that he could just get along with anybody,” Eligon sites Facebook posts from Brown. Quotes such as, “how yo own family dont wanna see you do good,” not only make Brown out to be ignorant, but a troubled teen. These posts, while they may be troubling to his family, would be seen by most as the rantings of a frustrated teenager. However, their contextual placement in this article and in this heated case, leads the reader to believe that they contain insidious undertones. Had this particular teen’s life not been outrageously publicized due to his death by a police officer, these Facebook posts would be disregarded as well as the implications of Brown’s criminal activity. Eligon eludes to Brown being involved with drugs, alcohol and, “had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar.” Again, outside of a highly publicized case such as this, these are the activities of a normal teenager.

Since the overarching controversy in this particular case was racism, I must give credit where credit is due; Eligon did a decent job of keeping race out of his profile. Aside from his descriptions, his insinuations that Brown was a bad kid were not connected to his race. However, calling Brown, “No Angel” on the day of his funeral was simply bad taste. The New York Times follow-up piece by Margaret Sullivan responding to the controversy did no good in my opinion. While conceding that the wording could have been different, in her article, Sullivan asserts that Eligon’s work is still good journalism. I disagree. Any journalist, journalism student, or consumer of the news knows that a good journalist keeps his/her own opinion out of their writing, unless they are writing an editorial, or some other piece where opinion is allowed. In any case, but especially in a case that had caused so much outrage, the editors of the times should have picked this “profile” apart. I did not learn much about Brown from his profile, and isn’t that what a profile should do? It should tell each side of the story, which I believe was the original intent. However, due to what I hope was an oversight, the New York Times let their reporter’s opinion be printed on the front page of one of the most widely read newspapers in the world.

Original NYT Article

Critique of July, 2015 NTY Article, “Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email”

Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email, a New York Times article by Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo attempts to explain the Hillary Clinton email scandal, however, their blunder involving facts about the Justice Department’s investigation, a criminal investigation in fact, was false.

Government officials are regulated by a set of checks and balances. These checks and balances, originally put into place by the First Amendment to the constitution, still hold standard today, even in our ever-changing technological times. During her time as the Secretary of State of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton had a personal email account. This fact came to light early on in her Presidential Campaign for the 2016 election. According to the article, the problem was not that she had the account; the problem was that she allegedly used that account to share classified information, an accusation that Clinton has vehemently denied. The Justice Department has not decided whether or not to open a full criminal investigation into the accusations, but in the meantime, Clinton has released the full account for review; a total of 55,000 pages. When read once, the article seems, for the most part informative and relatively non-bias, including quotes from the Clinton administration as well as ones from the State Department, and more, some criticizing the State Department’s handling of the controversy. But, upon further examination, and after reading through the two very critical corrections made by the Times in the days following the publication of this article, it is clear that there are major factual errors involved. One major falsity addressed in the correction was that the Justice Department had requested access to Clinton’s emails while she was in office. This is not true. There was an inquiry, but not one directed specifically to Hillary Clinton. The other correction addresses concerns with the wording of the article. The original article called the request, made by the Justice Department for more information regarding, “possible mishandling of classified information,” a “criminal referral” instead of what it actually was: a “security referral.”The issue of wording is article that can be linked back to bias of the author or in this case, authors. Calling this case “criminal” gives implications to the public that are very difficult to undo. The authors were seemingly thorough in their investigation, but not in their fact-checking and their wording. I do not see this article as an argument for or against Clinton. It is informative and indicative of the facts that were available at the time of its publication. I thought it was well-written, and contained no grammatical errors that I found. The flow of the article itself was a bit choppy, but this could be explained by having two authors on the story. However, it should have been smoothed over by Editors, and even more importantly, fact checked by Editors before publication. It is cases such as this that make the public leery of the media, as well as politicians and government. Who are they to believe? If a newspaper as prestigious and time-honored as the New York Times can make such a blunder on such a high-profile case, is any publication absolutely safe?

My general opinion of the work is that it was written well for the most part, and that the authors made an attempt at thorough research. However, the two major facts that were wrong in this article made a controversial issue for the Times. This, along with other corrections of other publications teaches us, as young journalist to always check our sources, and our writing over and over again.

Original NYT Article