Margaret SullivanVerified account
On coverage of campus rape & on a much criticized NYT sports column about Florida State. My post: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/from-a-writer-and-from-readers-strong-opinions-on-campus-rape-accusations/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body …
The New York Times From a Writer and From Readers, Strong Opinions on Campus Rape...
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From a Writer and From Readers, Strong Opinions on Campus Rape Accusations
In the history of The New York Times, the words “Sports of The Times” have a storied and well understood meaning. They accompany an opinion column, written by a staff member, including such prizewinning luminaries as Red Smith and Dave Anderson.
But the words don’t mean much to a vast new audience of digital readers who approached a recent column — carrying the “Sports of The Times” label — about a rape accusation against the Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston, thinking that they were reading straight news.
When the piece by Juliet Macur took a sharp turn into pointed commentary after a few introductory paragraphs, those readers took offense.
Alex Aisen of Carmel, Ind., who criticized the piece as “one-sided” and “emotion laden,” expressed the reaction of many after reading it online:
It was given prominent placement on the paper’s front web page last evening; this morning it was the lead piece on the sports page of the web site. To me, it appeared as if it were a news article. If the Times considers this to be an opinion piece or a column, that is held to far lesser standards than the paper’s journalism, then this should be readily apparent to readers of your web site. Opinion pieces and columns that appear on your editorial and op-ed pages are clearly just that, opinion pieces. But what is opinion is not always so apparent elsewhere in the paper. It should be.
I talked with the sports editor, Jason Stallman, about the presentation and content of the column on Monday afternoon. He was well aware of the complaints, as is Ms. Macur.
“There’s a very legitimate need for us to figure out what commentary looks like online,” Mr. Stallman said. “We need to do a better job with that.”
In addition, he said, this particular column brought a special set of challenges that probably added to the reader confusion and protest.
When The Times received the transcript of the hearing (which ultimately resulted in Mr. Winston being cleared of violating any campus rules) from a source, it had to decide whether to treat it as a straight news article or a column. Editors decided to treat it as a column, in part because the news of the transcript had already come out in other media outlets.
But that decision resulted in an awkward combination: Ms. Macur’s piece had elements of a news article, with paragraphs that read like this: “The comments come from a transcript of that hearing obtained by The New York Times. In her own voice, Mr. Winston’s accuser gave her fullest account yet of what she says happened that evening.” It continues: “The transcript also includes the testimony of a victim’s advocate who met with the accuser just hours after the woman reported that she had been raped. The advocate testified that the woman’s demeanor on that morning in 2012 was consistent with that of someone traumatized by sexual assault.”
The article then quotes Mr. Winston’s testimony, as he answered a question about in what manner his accuser gave her consent to having sex with him. He said she did not do so in words but rather by “moaning.”
It is at this point that the column abruptly changes gears. Ms. Macur’s next paragraph switches into the first person and highly charged language: “His answer was ridiculous and infuriating, and just shows how Florida State rolls these days. Or, should I say, how Florida State football steamrolls these days. Nothing to see here. Move along. Just head straight into the stands for the team’s next game.”
My take: There are three issues here.
The largest one is whether — as some readers believe — The Times is on a one-sided crusade about sexual assault, especially on campus. Reporters and editors certainly have made that issue a high priority over the past year, not only on Florida State, but with an investigation of a poorly handled sexual assault claim at Hobart and William Smith College, and a recent article about a student accused of sexual assault at Columbia University.
After a debacle at Rolling Stone, with its flawed reporting of a rape accusation at the University of Virginia, every media organization pursuing this subject needs to take a hard look at itself. My reading of Times coverage does not suggest any runaway trains. What I’m seeing is hard-nosed and aggressive reporting that has put a harsh spotlight on an ugly underside of campus life.
The next is inadequate labeling, and this clearly needs to be fixed. The article — especially when read online — closely resembles a news story. The fact that Ms. Macur is not well known as a columnist (her Times bio calls her a sports reporter), and still occasionally has bylines on news stories, adds to the confusion. It would be easy to remedy this with the word or label “Opinion” atop columns. While that’s not an elegant design solution, it’s probably the clearest to readers. Something like that should happen — and fast. Mr. Stallman said that this incident had made that clear to sports editors, and that they would act on it. In fact, it’s a problem throughout The Times’s online offerings, not just in sports — a subject I expect to return to soon.
The final issue is the mixing of news and opinion in one article. The column’s transition from newsiness to sharp opinion was part of what caused Paul Marx of Towson, Md., to write to me: “I challenge you to read today’s Macur without wincing.”
The Times should have first covered the transcript as a news story, then had a columnist follow up. Using an opinion column to break news is not unheard-of and not necessarily inappropriate. But in this case, it just didn’t work."
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