Miami Herald staff warned about political concerts

[Newsjock]

Memo posted at the Poynter Institute website
http://poynter.org/forum/?id=memos

From: Fiedler, Tom
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 2:46 PM
To: Miami Herald newsroom
Subject: political concerts

Folks,

Beginning in just a few days and likely extending until Election Day on Nov. 2, fund-raising concerts and events will be waved temptingly in front of us featuring such celebrities as Shaq O'Neill sic, Bruce Springsteen and many more. Don't succumb.

This isn't about the celebrities and their own political persuasions, but about the events themselves. The money generated by ticket sales to many events will be earmarked directly or indirectly to groups whose mission is to influence the outcome of the election. As you know and understand, it is improper for independent journalists -- which we are -- to engage in partisan politics or to advocate for political causes. In this case, buying a ticket to any of these events is tantamount to making a political contribution, which is prohibited by the newsroom's Guidelines on Ethics. (Accepting a free ticket to go to one of these concerts is at least as unethical as buying one, maybe more).

... Even if your job here doesn't entail covering politics, you do represent The Herald wherever you go.
more

[rawstory]

1. Newsjock, who is Tom field?

I can't find him in google. is he a high-ranking editor?

[rawstory]

3. I'm an idiot

Executive Editor of the Miami Herald.

[liberalnurse]

2. Are they allowed a second job?

Can they be self-employed as a freelance journalist and thus attend under that title?

[0007]

4. Is this guy a shake down artist or what?

Maybe that's what junior is doing to control the media these days, he's paying 'em off?

[indepat]

5. Does the Miami Herald endorse political candidates or do they refrain

from entering into any form of partisan politics?

[DCDemo]

7. Sort of

Most newspapers in the Knight Ridder chain have strict rules about not receiving anything of monetary value, and about not donating to political campaigns, parties, and candidates.

Thus...

1) You can't buy the ticket (politics)
2) You can't take a free one (no freebies!)


Cheers

[indepat]

10. Thanks: Didn't know this was a Knight Ridder newspaper

[flordehinojos]

6. Is Tom Fiedler, SON OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION that he is,

Is he forbidding, threatening, cajoling his journalists to refrain from supporting the democratic party ... I mean, are the celebrities that he mentions ones that have come out in favor of Kerry and will be supporting Kerry?

Does that mean that by subliminally, or explicitly threatening/forbidding/menacing/intimidating his journalists he is supporting the other side of the coin, the republican one?

Son of the American Revolution that he claims to be .... has he forgotten what the American Revolution was all about?

Wasn't it about freedom of speech, DEMOCRACY, and freedom to dissent which is a redundant way of saying freedom of speech?

I wonder what JIM DeFEDE, THE ONLY JOURNALIST AT THE MIAMI HERALD NOT OF THE RIGHT and knowledgeable about the democratic process in a democracy has to say about it. I wonder whether he will obey Fiedler the master or if he will claim freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom to dissent in a democratic society to show himself in any one of the concerts forbidden to Herald staff by Fiedler.

IT SEEMS TO ME TOM FIEDLER IS BETRAYING THE PRINCIPLES OF HIS ANCESTRY IF HE IS TRULY A SON OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS HE CLAIMS TO BE. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT HE IS MORE A TRAITOR TO OUR CONSTITUTION THAN THOSE WHO DISSENT WITH THE TANGLED WEB WEAVED BY THE BUSHCOS TO STEAL OUR DEMOCRACY AWAY FROM WE THE PEOPLE.

HIS ANCESTRY MUST BE TURNING IN THEIR GRAVES ...TOM FIEDLER LACKS THE SPIRIT OF THE TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT WHO STOOD, AND STANDS, FOR TRUTH AND POLITICAL AND SOCIAL JUSTICE.

[cybildisobedience]

8. just as an aside...

Tom Feidler is one of the journalists "credited" with destroying Gary Hart. Mr. Feidler was one of the hard-hitting journalists who hid in the bushes outside Hart's home to catch him with a woman he wasn't married to, Donna Rice (now a Repuke activist).
I remember him all over the airwaves, justifying his behavior as hard-hitting journalism.
In retrospect, it looks more and more like just a hit job.
Another reminder: This is the same editor who was very instrumental in how the NORC recount was handled. This is the one that was spun to conclusively show Bush as the legitimate winner of the 2000 election.
Gag -- we know that wasn't true.
He was under Marty Baron, who now is the editor of the Boston Globe.

[LisaM]

9. What if they want to review the concerts?

Can their reviewers go?

Besides, where was their partisan ethic compass when they put out that horrible headline to skew everyone's perception of the NORC recount?

[MarkTwain]

11. Regarding Mr. Fiedler....

First, he was the journalist totally and absolutely responsible for the "matter" involving Gary Hart. He was the "journalist" who hid in the bushes of Hart's townhouse and broke the storey.

Second, since he decided within the last decade to stake his career on a rise on the administrative side of The Miami Herald, he has become nothing more than the primary and chief whore of the Knight Ridder Media Powerhouse. He has done their bidding and without any equivocation gutted the newsroom, slashed creative and journalistic budgets and castrated any independent, much less progressive, thought within the editorial board.

Mr. Fiedler has become nothing more than a corporate whore. He has lost any right to ever be called an "editor" in the respected sense of the word.

The Miami Herald, at best, is a pale ghost of itself relative to thirty years ago. It is nothing more than an advertiser's wasteland.

In both its news coverage and on its editorial pages, it consistently leans to the conservative in a feeble and impotent attempt to placate the wingnut Cuban community. There is no real content to the paper much less anything resembling journalistic excellence any longer. Yes, they have Morin and his cartoons and DeFede and his progressive muckraking but that's about it for any real quality of intellect at that paper. The rest are all grade B market hacks and, in that sense, Mr. Fiedler is right at home.

When you can't make it in the big time, you wind up in Miami.