March 08, 2004
ULI'S REALITY
Uli Schmetzer defends his faked-up use of the perfect quote:
You have assured the guy you are not going to quote him. But what he says absolutely reflects reality and is in the interests of your reading public. What do you do? Do you forget the quote? Do you tag it onto an anonymous source (an option that means it won’t see print these days)? Or do you break your code of ethics and change the name?
I felt in my case I acted in the interest of the readers to know there is a segment of the Australian public with this kind of opinion about natives, a fact that nearly all Australians, like myself, are aware of, though few have the courage to say so in public. I cited the quote but refused to use the author's name as this could have ruined his public career.
These are the decisions which journalists wrestle with day after day, in war zones, dictatorships and just plain difficult situations out there in the real world.
It's a very different world from the one inhabited by Mr. Wycliff who pontificates on the rights and wrongs from his ivory tower on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Excuse me, but Uli Schmetzer is full of shit. In his original piece, he didn’t use “Graham Thorn’s” quote to indicate the beliefs of a “segment of the Australian public”. He used it to support his line that “the outlook of white Australians seldom is sympathetic” towards Aborigines; the opinion of “Thorn” was presented as typical.
It isn’t.
(To read how the Schmetzer saga evolved, go here, here, here, here and here.)
Posted by Tim Blair at March 8, 2004 09:37 PMWell, if that quote is so typical or representative of the beliefs of million of Aussies, why couldn't he just get someone else to go on the record with the same sentiments?
These media types really do think we are stupid, don't they. I mean, your average 12 year old has better cover stories than those clowns.
Posted by: R C Dean at March 8, 2004 at 10:15 PMHey. My son used to make up better excuses when he was four. For these guys, being forced to defend their lying crap is the worst thing that happens to them, because it opens up the rest of their crap. The fact that he had to respond at all, instead of just 'fessing up, leads me to believe this was not the first time.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie at March 8, 2004 at 11:26 PMNo Jorg, it's not the first time. He was full of shit in the article about kangaroos that Tim linked to a while back, too. Just about every "fact" in that article was wrong.
This guy clearly knows nothing about Australia, yet he pretends to be some kind of expert. Maybe he thinks he can get away with fanciful bullshit about Australia over there?
Posted by: Bob Bunnett at March 9, 2004 at 12:30 AMThis mentioned in Washington Post today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39222-2004Mar7_2.html
He is behaving like the proverbial roo in the headlights of a semi. He bounces this way and that but the outcome is the same: road kill.
Posted by: Rob at March 9, 2004 at 06:07 AMUli made up "Thorn's" occupation as psychiatrist presumably to give it more weight. Liar.
Posted by: Matt at March 9, 2004 at 06:32 AMTim Blair himself has fabricated a fictitious interviewee and invented quotes to disparage Aboriginal people in his own blog, just a couple of weeks ago.
check it out!
http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/005811.php
Guess we can't get him to sack himself from his little empire, but maybe some of those media outlets whose attention Blair so craves, can follow up with a story about how he is a hypocrit and a racist lowlife.
Follow that link now, tomorrow it may be gone!
Posted by: Miranda Divide at March 9, 2004 at 08:08 AMCome on, the only person remotely taken in by that gag was me, in my enthusiasm to find an ethics professor with ethics.
Posted by: Sortelli at March 9, 2004 at 09:43 AMFor a segment of the American public the words 'White Australia' as in 'White Australia Policy' are still current. That is, some African Americans. I've heard this from them personally. 'Oh you're from Australia where they have the White Australia Policy, right?' Ignoring the fact that Australia dropped its policy the same time America and even Canada dropped their 'Whites only' policies, they seem to be under the impression that Australia has a unique race problem. Even Samuel Jackson, after his recent stay here to make the Matrix movies, does not seem to have shaken this impression - but I would suggest that while here he had little opportunity to get out and meet real Australians, white and black and...whatever.
Chicago is still an important centre of African American people. Therefore, unless Uli actually had some empirical evidence to back up his simplistic claims, his article is the worst kind of slander. Let's do a Bart Simpson on him- get him out here to see the real Oz and apologise.
Let the Tribune do some actual reporting on how the problems of Australia's indigenees resemble those of American Indians, not those of American black people.
Posted by: concerned at March 9, 2004 at 09:50 AMThe worst part of this is the way he turns on Wycliff, discounting him with a snide, unfair and illogical suggestion (obviously Schmetzer's pet technique) that Wycliff is out of touch:
It's a very different world from the one inhabited by Mr. Wycliff who pontificates on the rights and wrongs from his ivory tower on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Schmetzer is the very worst kind of journalist. A post-rationalising, self-important liar.
Posted by: ilibcc at March 9, 2004 at 10:04 AMA piece of interesting trivia for our American friends:
The first person to sing at the Sydney Opera House was the famous African American Paul Robeson.
http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/h/c_rinfo/c_rinfo_30years.html
Posted by: concerned at March 9, 2004 at 10:04 AMerr, what role did Samuel Jackson play in the Matrix movies?
Posted by: Paul Dub at March 9, 2004 at 10:27 AMThese are the (fact-flubbing) decisions which journalists wrestle with day after day, in war zones, dictatorships and just plain difficult situations out there in the real world.
Well that makes it all okay then. Uli lived in constant fear here in war-torn Australia, never knowing when the brutal agents of our dictatorship were going to burst in and spray him with machine-gun fire. Under such circumstances, I think even the best of us would be tempted to bend the ethics of journalism. He's not a shoddy hack - he's an American Hero!
Samuel Jackson, Forrest Whitaker, Lawrence Fishburne, Sidney Poitier, what's the difference? Blacks, Aborigines, they all look the same anyway...
Posted by: Graham Thorn at March 9, 2004 at 11:07 AMNo they don't all look the same and they don't all act the same which is where Uli's article is offensive.
Sorry Paul, you got me. Lawrence Fishburne. I get them mixed up. All those Americans are the same to me!
But it seems that Mr Fishburne had a change of heart anyway, and thinks the Olympics had something to do with it. Maybe so.
see his commenst here:
http://www.reevesdrive.com/newsarchive/2003/dtele050503.htm
It is extremely revealing to see how Uli believes that that telling his readers about the extent of Australian racism is so urgent ("in the interests of your reading public") that he felt it necessary to break the code of ethics.
I try to get outraged at this paternalistic and condescending regard for both his subject (Australians) and his readers (Chicagoans). I try to be angry about the agenda-driven reporting and distortion of the truth.
But I cannot muster the bile - it's just too hilarious. The sheer self-regard, the out-sized delusions of the importance of the mission of his own reporting is simply absurd. This guy obviously thinks he's got some kind of Watergate type story on his hands: He had to tell the truth and protect his source - a high-level insider.
I can just picture Uli saying with his voice raised in righteous zeal: "Chicagoans must know about the remark some guy made to me in a bar! The truth must out! What kind of world are we living in when good progressive foreign correspondents can't teach their benighted, naive readers to sneer at benighted, provincial Australians!!???"
Posted by: John in Tokyo at March 9, 2004 at 12:16 PM"Tim Blair himself has fabricated a fictitious interviewee and invented quotes to disparage Aboriginal people in his own blog, just a couple of weeks ago."
You poor dear.
Posted by: Angus Jung at March 9, 2004 at 01:00 PM(snip)...fictitious ...
Says it all really, doesn't it?
Posted by: Quentin George at March 9, 2004 at 08:16 PM>Follow that link now, tomorrow it may be gone!
Still there, Miranda, unlike your credibility or grip on reality.
Posted by: John Nowak at March 9, 2004 at 08:46 PMINDYMEDIA
uli schmetzer lives in melbourne
by lora Wednesday March 10, 2004 at 02:45 AM
Here is more about the Australian journalist who returned to his country and apparently could not stomach the latent racism.
Here is more about the Australian journalist who
returned to his country and apparently could not
stomach the latent racism. He is "disovered" by a
racist blogger with a sheriff mentality who complains
the journalist may have used a fictitious name and
profession for his quote. The journalist admits it,
but argues he wanted to protect his source. He then
resigns though his paper announces he was fired.
After the hunt for rogue countries we have now
embarked on the hunt for rogue journalists. This is
how the neon-conservatives in strategic positions
purge dissent. Voices who do not conform to their
codes are purged. Ironically, and not without sinister
motives, this occurs at a time when international
ethics are constantly broken with impunity - just
look at Guatanamo and the Iraq war.
From ULI SCHMETZER:
As a veteran journalist with four decades in the profession, 38 of them as foreign correspondent, I am shocked by the callous way that a few executives at the Chicago Tribune handled my case after an association with the newspaper spanning 25 years. Until 1986 I was their stringer, from 1986 I was bureau chief in Rome, Beijing, Manila, New Delhi and Tokyo. I retired in 2002 but continued to work on an exclusive contract basis, renewable annually.
I did not fabricate the quote. I was called about the issue at three in the morning in Jakarta, where I was on assignment. I requested time to prove the quote was not fabricated although I admitted I had changed the name and profession of the person quoted.
Instead the Tribune ombudsman, Don Wycliff, rushed into print a few hours later without allowing me the courtesy of first looking at the text of the correction/apology. The first news I had was when AP -- in a truly professional manner -- contacted me for a comment and sent me a copy of the statement.
I was not fired, as the Tribune is trying to suggest. I resigned. Under the contract Mr. Wycliff signed with
me, he was supposed to give me 30 days notice in case of termination (a clause applicable to both sides).
In fact, I had already told the Tribune by email that I considered the contract terminated. I did so because certain executives at the paper felt I had broken the Tribune's code of ethics/trust following the complaint of one Australian reader who questioned the name and profession attached to a quote -- though not the content of the quote.
The smug announcement by Mr. Wycliff in his column headed: "How a journalist's career came undone" must have given anyone the impression the paper, or at least he, believes all my work is now suspect. Strangely, and perhaps wrongly, I still believe in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty.
In that 3 a.m. phone call, Mr. Wycliff asked me to co-operate if the Tribune investigated other stories. I agreed, unaware I was already convicted. I cannot cooperate with an inquiry whose conclusion appears to have been already determined and that has already condemned before it even started. Since Mr. Wycliff strung me up on a string he now wants my help to weave a proper rope to hang me.
By my own rough estimate Mr. Wycliff and his team (and he has promised to employ as many as 60 people if necessary) will have to peruse some 3,000 stories that I have written for the Tribune over the years. I wish him luck. My conscience is clear. If there were errors during those years they were not errors governed by malice or deceit but normal human errors.
I've had an excellent career and relationship with the Tribune and had unwavering support in often difficult and dangerous situations while I worked as their staff correspondent since 1986. I wish we could have parted on more amiable terms. I love the paper but remain devastated by the way the case was handled. It was so unlike the Tribune I know -- and believed in.
I can only guess someone decided to take my scalp to show the paper was on the bandwagon of the relentless pursuit of rogue journalists. Only I can assure them now, before they go to the expense, they have picked the wrong victim.
What is really in contention here is not my case or the Tribune's decision but the dilemma of ethics in journalism today. This is where the Tribune and I have come into conflict.
Just about every day journalists have to make a decision whether the ethics imposed on them by their papers are in conflict with public interest or their own conscience.
As the European philosopher Slavoj Zizek states in his book "The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology" it is impossible today to stay impartial and pretend neutrality or hide behind a code of ethics. By remaining neutral you are in fact supporting the status quo. Breaking ethics when it is merited is the right of every individual.
The professional code of ethics is not legally binding. Yes, the company manager who denounces his company for making dirty deals is breaking his company's secrecy act but he prefers to act in the public interest and in tune with his own conscience. Is he wrong?
Take the case of the person who gives you that elusive "perfect quote."
You have assured the guy you are not going to quote him. But what he says absolutely reflects reality and is in the interests of your reading public. What do you do? Do you forget the quote? Do you tag it onto an anonymous source (an option that means it wonνt see print these days)? Or do you break your code of ethics and change the name?
During my eight years in China, which included the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, I lived with such dilemmas all the time. If I quoted someone critical of the government or its methods, he or she was certain to lose their job, their apartment and their livelihood -- at the very least. Some Chinese who
dared to talk to foreign reporters have ended up in a labour camp.
So what do you do, if you believe, as I do, that people are more important than institutions or their ethics? As a fellow human being you have a responsibility to the person who has opened his thoughts and his heart. This is where rigid codes of ethics break down.
I felt in my case I acted in the interest of the readers to know there is a segment of the Australian public with this kind of opinion about natives, a fact that nearly all Australians, like myself, are aware of, though few have the courage to say so in public. I cited the quote but refused to use the author's name as this could have ruined his public career.
These are the decisions which journalists wrestle with day after day, in war zones, dictatorships and just plain difficult situations out there in the real world.
It's a very different world from the one inhabited by Mr. Wycliff who pontificates on the rights and wrongs from his ivory tower on the shores of Lake Michigan.