EDITORIAL: Sloppy and irresponsible journalism (07/12/98)

EDITORIAL

Sloppy and irresponsible journalism

Here's one of those good news/bad news scenarios. This past week the word "Ukrainian" appeared in the headline of the lead story on the front page of a national newspaper in the United States. The overwhelmingly bad news is that it read: "Ukrainian convicted of killing Cosby's son." (Early editions of the paper even misspelled Ukrainian as "Ukranian," but that's another issue...)

That was how the July 8 issue of USA Today, the McDonald's of the newspaper industry, reported on the guilty verdict handed down in the murder case against Mikhail Markhasev, a 19-year-old who immigrated to this country from Ukraine. The news story itself referred to the defendant as a "Ukrainian immigrant." Another misleading description. (The description was correct, however, in a sidebar that noted he had "emigrated to the USA from Ukraine in 1989.")

We should note that USA Today, which bills itself on its flag as "No. 1 in the USA ... First in Daily Readers," is not the only news media outlet that got it wrong. The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper, and the Daily Record of Morris County, N.J., (where The Ukrainian Weekly is now based) both carried Associated Press stories referring to the Mr. Markhasev as a "Ukrainian immigrant." Even the venerable "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," which airs on PBS television stations, made that same mistake. We could go on and one, but you get the point. There must be countless other newspapers and newscasts across the country that did likewise.

The issue of how the convicted murderer was identified is important. By blasting the word "Ukrainian" in its headline, USA Today smeared all Ukrainians. (Oh yeah, you're Ukrainian ... one of you guys murdered Cosby ...) Certainly the defendant's national origin - which, for the record, we do not know - is not pertinent to the story of the murder.

On the other hand, referring to Mr. Markhasev as "a Ukrainian immigrant" causes confusion. Is his background Ukrainian? Did he emigrate from Ukraine? Or, perhaps, is he a Ukrainian immigrant from, say, Australia? There is a difference between saying "immigrant from Ukraine" and "Ukrainian immigrant." Unfortunately, most of the news media just don't get it.

To its credit, The New York Times, which is much more sensitive to such issues, does get it. That newspaper characterized Mr. Markhasev as "immigrating here from Ukraine." Exactly right - well, almost ... Since he emigrated in 1989, at the age of 9 or 10 according to our calculations, that would have been from the Ukrainian SSR, which means he bore a Soviet passport, ... not Ukraine, which became independent in 1991. And, for goodness sake, he's been in the U.S. for nine years - half his life. Perhaps he should be characterized as "a permanent resident of the U.S."

So, now that we've dealt with the issue of precision journalism, on to the question of journalistic responsibility and principles.

The stylebooks of most major news organizations have guidelines on the use of terms denoting race or nationality in news stories. The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, for example, advises that identification of a person's race or nationality should be provided "when pertinent," for example, in stories where such identification "provides the readers with substantial insight into conflicting emotions known or likely to be involved in a demonstration or similar event."

Thus, describing Mr. Markhasev as "Ukrainian" (even if he was a Ukrainian) clearly violates such guidelines. USA Today was way out of line with its headline. A hint: insert any other ethnic group's name into that type of headline and see how appropriate that would be.

So, to the news media we say: be precise in what you write, and check your stylebooks if you can't figure out for yourself whether a certain reference is acceptable or not, whether it defames an entire nationality by implication.

To our readers: write, call, fax or e-mail your news outlets and let them know how you feel about such sloppy and irresponsible journalism.

To contact USA Today, fax your comments to Letters to the Editor, (703) 247-3108; send copies to the editor, David Mazarella, (703) 558-3881, and the publisher, Thomas Curley, (703) 558-3956.