Arnold 2003: Stewart vs. Carroll

Updates:

Jill Stewart's original 'New Times' column is here.

My analysis of the Times' coverage is here.

Until we get comments back up here, feel free to comment at Armed Liberal.

Original Post:

Jill Stewart has a column up responding to John Carroll's slam of her recent criticism of the L.A. Times (around the issues blogged in the SkyBox Davis expose, and The Art of the Knife). She's also got an (anonymous) interview with a Times staffer which, if true, just blows the hell out of any pretense of impartiality or fairness on Carroll's part during the recent California recall.

In case you need to be titillated...

"Toward the end, a kind of hysteria gripped the newsroom. I witnessed a deep-seated, irrational need to get something on this guy [Schwarzenegger]. By Wednesday before it was published, I counted not fewer than 24 reporters dispatched on Arnold, and this entire enterprise was directed by John Carroll himself."

"Carroll launched the project with the words: 'I want a full scrub of Arnold.' This was fully and completely and daily driven by Carroll. He's as good as his word on being balanced and trying to make this paper more balanced, he really is. But not when it came to Schwarzenegger. Carroll changed completely. It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn't care what it was."

...

"It all happened amidst a poisonous atmosphere here against Schwarzenegger---a blatant political undertone that was everywhere in the newsroom. These are people who have been in the building a long time and have formed a culture together. It's easy for all of us to start thinking very much alike."

"The reporters probed everything they could think of about Schwarzenegger: his health, his businesses, his charities. They couldn't find out anything horrible about his charities, but they tried very, very hard. His business empire made him look good---so the business empire story was buried in the paper. It ended up on something like, I don't know, Page A36. And as these issues got abandoned because they produced no dirt on Arnold, as desired by Carroll, the team going after him got more and more focused on sex and steroids."

"It was awful to watch Carroll. It became a Capt. Ahab and Moby Dick thing where they felt an increasing need to nail those points that could most hurt Schwarzenegger. At times, it made me physically uncomfortable to be in the newsroom."

As they say, read the whole thing. Here's my take: I'm met Jill once or twice (we're certainly not friends), and she doesn't seem suicidal. For her to lay this directly on the Times, and to do so publicly, means she believes in what she's saying, and believes that when push comes to shove, she'll get backed up. Because if she's not...

I'm making popcorn.

Oct. 20 Update: If you scroll to the bottom of Jill's column, there's a correction; it appears that her source got the betting pool wrong.

"Note: In a previous version of this interview, the source stated that betting pool of 113 journalists conducted at the Times showed about 25 percent thought Schwarzenegger would win and recall would win. However, reporter Ken Reich, who conducted the pool, says this information is wrong and offers the following correction:

'Of the 113 participants, 74 picked both the recall to pass and Schwarzenegger to win the replacement race.... Of the 113, by the way, 101 picked Schwarzenegger to win the replacement race, 11 Bustamante and one McClintock.' "

Kind of a significant fact to get wrong; but as noted, I'm buttering the popcorn waiting to see how this develops.