Jackson Free Press

The Clarion-Ledger ran a letter today from Philip Weinberg, chief assistant district attorney.

The letter regards a Nov. 9 story by Chris Joyner on an e-mail Weinberg sent to members of the Mississippi Prosecutors Association, asking them to consider carefully their statements to journalists. The letter also makes reference to an editorial The Clarion-Ledger published on Nov. 10.

The letter was edited so extensively by The Clarion-Ledger that it's difficult to decipher Weinberg's point. Weinberg's full letter (PDF, 720 KB) makes for interesting comparison reading.

In the full letter, Weinberg makes it clear that his main beef with Goliath was not the story written by Joyner--though he thought that story provided insufficient context--but the editorial published the following day. The editorial asserted that Weinberg had asked other prosecutors to decline to be interviewed, an assertion which is contradicted by Joyner's story itself. Here, Weinberg calls that assertion "an outright lie." He strongly objects to the implication in that editorial that he was resisting or seeking to rescind the gag order. Weinberg concludes by arguing that The Clarion-Ledger's attack on the gag order, using his e-mail, bolsters the arguments in favor of gag orders.

From a media perspective, it's interesting how much The Clarion-Ledger cut out of Weinberg's letter. All publications have submission guidelines and word limits. However, here the cuts were so extensive that they arguably change the meaning of the letter. For instance, it is not clear from the cut letter that Weinberg's ire is directed at the editorial far more than the story. The cut letter prints Weinberg's definition of yellow journalism, but none of his argument for why The Clarion-Ledger's editorial qualifies as yellow journalism. In fact, the last sentence of the cut letter appears nowhere in the full letter: "Your lying about my e-mail and its implications squarely fits within that definition."

If nothing else, Weinberg's letter illustrates one more time how sloppy The Clarion-Ledger's editorials are with the facts.

Previous Commentsshow

Anyone who believes that the revisions of Weinberg's letter weren't made with the specific idea in mind of making him look like an idiot, please raise your hand. If there were a Jackson-specific version of The Onion, the top headline would need to read "Clarion-Ledger Endorses Yet-Undetermined White Male Candidate in 2007 District Attorney Race." Cheers, TH

Tom Head

Nov 22 2006

It is really facinating to see how the editors took a letter and changed its meaning to fit their "editorial" views. This is like pulling the covers off how news can be manipulated to affect the readers. Good job JFP, and hats off to Mr. Weinberg's moxie to allow us to peek behind closed doors, so to speak.

pikersam

Nov 22 2006