Talk:Nedra Pickler

NPOV

A previous version of this article was speedily deleted as an attack. Because of this, I think it's especially important to maintain a neutral point of view in this new version of the article. A lot of the criticism of Ms. Pickler's writing is that it is filled with damaging insinuations. Whether or not that's the case, Wikipedia should aspire to a higher standard.

Some relevant bits of contention:

• It's not clear from the sources whether Bush called her "Baby" (i.e. "Nedra, Baby, ...") or "Nedra Baby", and in any case, I couldn't find any indication this happened more than once. In light of this, I don't think it's fair to make the same assumption that the Houston Chronicle blogger makes ("Bush calls her 'Nedra Baby.'") -- at least not without attributing that statement. Rush Limbaugh, on the other hand has a longer record of making comments both pro- and anti- Pickler. I didn't dig deep, but he seems to have used the same pet name for Pickler more than once. In any case, if this kind of thing can be reliably sourced, so be it. But it seems to me that it ought to be put in context, lest it be read as an attempt to tar Pickler with a degree of intimacy that can't actually be documented.
• I don't think a point-by-point refutation of Pickler's article from the day before yesterday belongs here. Imagine if the Thomas Friedman or Maureen Dowd or George Will articles would look like if every contentious writing of theirs was dissected. I don't see anything wrong with referencing the Obama article or the reaction to it, but it should be placed in context of her career. After all, this is an article about her. It's a little odd that half the text is about an article she published two days ago. (It's possible that more detail might be appropriate in the articles on Obama, or on the 2008 presidential race.)
• Any critique of Pickler or her works should be sourced, rather than original: For example, I agree that "The voices are growing louder asking the question..." is "weaselly". But it's not our place to make that judgement here. If Pickler were notably criticized for her use of weasel words, on the other hand...

--Shunpiker 02:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear from the sources whether Bush called her "Baby" (i.e. "Nedra, Baby, ...") or "Nedra Baby"

It's clear to me.

Imagine if the Thomas Friedman or Maureen Dowd or George Will articles would look like if every contentious writing of theirs was dissected.

It would be really long, and some material would be removed. This article is not long. Consequently, no material needs to be removed, which is what I presume you are advocating for.

I agree that "The voices are growing louder asking the question..." is "weaselly". But it's not our place to make that judgement here.

It's not a judgement, it's a fact based on the definition of the term 'weasal word' and the contents of the quoted sentence. What you are arguing is that the article can't say what we both agree is true. — goethean ॐ 03:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The only criticsm of Pickler seems to come from one article at Media Matters, and does not qualify as a WP:RS, and even if it did, it most certainly violates undue weight. As such, I am taking the liberty of removing the material. After reviewing WP:BLP, I would also have to conclude that MMFA does not meet the criteria for use in a WP:BLP, and could be excluded on those grounds alone. Hempbilly 21:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the material. Please use the discussion page to hash this out instead of deleting what appears to be directly relevant information from multiple sources, not just MMFA. Gamaliel (Orwellian Cyber hell master) 01:23, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The basis of the "complaint" is one piece from MMFA, and one from a blog. The supporting material, from multiple sources, is a violation of WP:SYNT. Hempbilly 16:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

You have removed material from multiple reliable sources and replaced it with...nothing. Going from one extreme to the other is not NPOV or proper editing. If you have a problem with the material, please specify it here. Don't just yell "Media Matters!" and gut the article. It is not true that the whole section is derived from Media Matters. Gamaliel (Orwellian Cyber hell master) 17:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Career Section

To start this discussion, I think we should lay down the groundwork with a few relevant passages from WP:BLP. Emphasis mine.

Editors should be on the lookout for biased or malicious content about living persons in biographies and elsewhere. If someone appears to be pushing an agenda or a biased point of view, insist on reliable third-party published sources and a clear demonstration of relevance to the person's notability.

And

Any assertion in a biography of a living person that might be defamatory if untrue must be sourced. Without reliable, third-party sources, a biography will violate our content policies of No original research and Verifiability, and could lead to libel claims.

Material available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all. Material found in self-published books, zines, websites or blogs should never be used, unless written or published by the subject (see below). These sources should also not be included as external links in BLPs, subject to the same exception.

And Finally

The views of critics should be represented if their views are relevant to the subject's notability and are based on reliable secondary sources, and so long as the material is written in a manner that does not overwhelm the article or appear to side with the critics' material. Be careful not to give a disproportionate amount of space to critics, to avoid the effect of representing a minority view as if it were the majority one. If the criticism represents the views of a tiny minority, it has no place in the article.

Onto the section

In her coverage of the 2004 presidential race, Pickler drew criticism for her treatment of Democratic candidates, including Howard Dean [8] and John Kerry. [9]

To say that she drew criticism’s about Dean is false. The only one I can find is the one from Welch, making it one “criticism” not several “criticisms”. And is “one” grounds for the inclusion into the article? The link from the times repeats some fairly libelous statements from a number of weblogs and websites.

According to a story by Media Matters for America, a 27 March 2007 article written by Pickler entitled "Is Obama All Style and Little Substance?" falsely claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had "delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country" in his campaign up to that point.[10] In fact, Obama had given numerous policy speeches on Iraq[11], Israel[12], health care[13], and other topics.[14] Media Matters observed that Pickler's own article contradicted her claim with the following:

Obama has offered a plan to get troops out of Iraq, beginning with a drawdown in May that would extended through a March 2008 goal of redeploying all combat troops. The plan is unlikely to become reality with Bush in office, but is what Obama says he would do if he were in the Oval Office today.[15]

This portion has quite a few violations of many guidelines. Unless the MMFA piece specifically pointed out that Obama had made policy speeches on Iraq, Israel, etcetera, this is WP:NOR and WP:SYNT, as it is providing additional information to butress the MMFA claim, and this additional information was not brought up by someone else. And even had MMFA used these to reinforce its case it still falls under the WP:BLP diclaimer: “Material available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all.”, and MMFA is most definitely a partisan website.

The article began with the following weasel words: "The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance?" This claim is fleshed out in the article by quotations from two individuals, one of which was identified as an organizer for candidate Dennis Kucinich, who were "not impressed" with Obama's remarks at a forum on health care in Las Vegas, Nevada. The article did not mention that Obama has authored two best-selling books, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, but did compare Obama to Gary Hart:

If Obama were running in a different time, he might get more of a break for lacking specifics. Primary votes were already being cast in the 1984 Democratic primary when Walter Mondale famously ridiculed opponent Gary Hart by asking, "Where's the beef?" Four years ago, no candidate for president had a health care plan this early in the game.

The article also pointed readers to a spam URL and presented it as the Obama campaign's website.[16]

“The article began with the following weasel words”, you seriously have no problems with this? None of the other material is sourced anywhere and appears to be formulating an opinion independent of any WP:RS, putting it in the realm of WP:NOR.

The entire “career” section is a thinly veiled hit piece on Pickler. Is here entire career really been mired by controversy, as the section implies? Are her comments about Obama being an empty suit really going to define her coverage of the 08 election? I don’t think so. Hempbilly 18:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Hempbilly,

I appreciate your efforts to make this article comply with WP:NPOV and WP:BLP. Since a previous version of this article was deleted for failing to comply with those policies, I think it is especially important that we get it right this time around.

With that said, I think the article in its current state -- i.e. with the entire "Career" section deleted -- fails to show how it is that Nedra Pickler has achieved an unusual amount of name-recognition for an AP writer. Since her coverage of the 2004 presidential election, prominent commentators from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum (e.g. Markos "Kos" Zuniga and Rush Limbaugh) have notably characterized, praised and criticized her style.

I agree that there were serious problems in the "Obama" story section -- I laid out my objections above. But I disagree that the entire "Career" section is a "hit piece" -- at least not in intention. But I agree that it is inappropriate that a section consisting of only criticism is titled "Career". Here's how that came about -- maybe this will give some ideas for fixing the article:

I wrote the "Biography" section when I found that the article consisted almost entirely of commentary on a story that had just been published. I created the "Career" section as a first step towards resolving differences with the previous content and addressing the problem of recentism. I also added the 2004 section, as it became clear this wasn't the first time Pickler had become a subject of national discussion. I would rather see responsibly sourced criticism integrated into the body of the article, doing away with both the "Biography" and "Career" sections. But until the differences on the 2008 coverage were resolved, I thought it better not to attempt the merge.

I agree that the use of the references in the 2004 section could be improved: It should be purged of the passive voice, and the sources of criticism should be better identified. But the sources themselves are mainstream and the content is germane.

Regarding the New York Times story: It would be inappropriate if "libelous" statements from that article (or any article) were given undue weight or quoted out of context. But in this case, the story is used to document that Pickler has been (notably) accused of bias on the web. Hence the subtitle of that article: "Web Offers Hefty Voice to Critics of Mainstream Journalists". It's not hard to find the various blogs that NYT is summarizing. The reason we can't use those blogs themselves as sources is obvious. However, if the New York Times uses criticism of Pickler to characterize a trend, it's attributable. Perhaps the use of that story could be expanded to describe the context (e.g. "Pickler was cited in a New York Times article...") and include AP's response ("We get lobbed at from the left and the right...").

As for Pickler and Dean, I found many web sites discussing the controversy. I could go googling again. I used Welch's discussion as one of the more complete and reliable accounts. And it didn't hurt that it came from a (Libertarian) source not entirely aligned with either "left" or "right".

Anyway, I hope this helps to make sense of some of the issues brewing in this article. -- Shunpiker 20:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The blog by Time magazine reporter Jay Newton-Small contradicted itself because it stated Pickler had established that "talks" had occurred between the Obama advisor and the Canadian embassy, then quoted from Pickler, who actually had written "Canadian consulate". Therefore, I deleted that source.

See the discussion of this article at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard under the article title (expect the thread to be archived within a few days of now).

The puff piece by Jim Rutenberg at NYT was not a valid source for this Wikipedia article. The NYT in general is a reliable source, but this NYT article did not report specific criticisms of Nedra Pickler. Instead it reported epithets that have been hurled at her, and epithets can be criticisms, but Rutenberg didn't dignify any specific claim against her. In some contexts, that might suffice, but not here. Besides, why cite a vapid statement from a puff piece intended to piss on bloggers when I have succeeded in finding reliable sources that discuss specific passages from specific articles written by Pickler?

Note that several citations were found to be dead links or just unverifiable. I couldn't verify that Media Matters for America responded to Pickler's 8 July. MMA almost certainly did respond, but WP's article lacked a good link. I substituted other RS criticism. By the way, earlier editor's messed up a quote from that article: Pickler did not write the consecutively write ". . . not even trying . . .", but "not a goal he's even trying to reach". Hurmata (talk) 01:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Organization of citations

So, Shunpiker, what's your objection to "splitting up general and specific references"? Hurmata (talk) 03:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Hurmata, I have no objection to splitting up general and specific references; when both kinds of references are present, they should definitely be distinguished. In this case, it appears that the article had only specific references, each of which were being listed once as a specific and once as a general reference. I thought this was confusing and potentially misleading.

I consolidated them as specific references (as they were initially employed) to eliminate the duplication and to make the article adhere more closely to practices followed by other articles and the Wikipedia citation guidelines as I understand them.

Do you feel that, in editing the references, I lost something that you intended to communicate in organizing the references as you did? Could you point to other articles which use that style of citation and/or explain how the citation guidelines justify that style of referencing?

In any case, the references could still use some more cleanup that predates this question: The article should make use of citation templates, rather than the freeform text currently used in the body of the references.

Are we on the same footnote now? -- Shunpiker (talk) 14:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• WP:CITE discusses the style I applied. It doesn't recommend it above all others. This style is increasingly common, at the very least, in academic journals; it may be predominant. It seems predominant in natural and social sciences. The old fashioned style of long footnotes presented on the page where they're indicated seems still popular in the humanities. I could be persuaded that since our articles are all on one page, the "split" style is not advantageous. I think it's easier to edit articles when the inline footnotes are short. I could be persuaded that ease of editing is not the top priority.
• I hate those citation templates. For nearly every article they are excessively detailed and hence cumbersome without compensating benefit. Hurmata (talk) 17:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Nationality in lead

I have reveerted to include "American" rather than US or United States. This seems pretty standard stuff unless I missing something? Thank you, --70.109.223.188 (talk) 16:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

"American" is vague. U.S. is specific. If there is no explicit Wikipedia policy which you are citing, then stop baselessly reverting other editors. — goethean ॐ 21:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Deleted "stub" categorization

Just now. Hurmata (talk) 00:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Roger Stone story

On 21:46, 11 August 2008 Gamaliel wrote this edit summary: "we don't need to recount the Roger Stone article here". Here's why we do: Stone's extreme tactic is largely the basis for both impeaching Pickler's heavy reliance on him as a source for criticizing a politician and for providing context to the massive number of protests, 15,000, that Pickler's article received. Hurmata (talk) 02:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll concede the point. My concern was that the criticism section was overwhelming the article, not with that specific info, and I was looking for places to trim. Gamaliel (talk) 03:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with the criticism section getting longer and longer. It's what makes her notable. She wouldn't be notable just for being a senior reporter, nor for winning an in-house award from AP for covering the Michigan Congressional delegation. Charles Manson is only notable for bad things. Hurmata (talk) 04:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I made a few edits to try for a more neutral tone without removing any information on Pickler. Redddogg (talk) 06:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Undue weight to charges

It would really be better to just have a couple sentences saying that she has been criticized for biased (pro-Republican) and unprofessional reporting and have footnotes to the sources so that people could check out the controversy themselves. WP shouldn't be a court of law where evidence is presented against individuals. (Political note to Obama supporters: Do you really think it helps to be seen as attacking, one, a mainstream journalist and, two, a successful professional woman?) Just my thoughts. Steve Dufour (talk) 22:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

This remark starts off strongly, but you finish it with an clumsy rhetorical question. (1) "helps" what? (2) Nedra Pickler does not represent professional women because she is one professional woman of millions. There aren't just 117 professional women in America, so that faulting one of them is an attack on all. (3) What is perturbing about faulting a mainstream journalist? Hurmata (talk) 22:44, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. My last remark was to Obama supporters (I'm going to vote for him too.) assuming that the blog attacks on Ms Pickler were intended to help his campaign. Americans don't like it when politicians have "enemies lists" of journalists. They also tend to feel sympathy when women are personally attacked. The second is not very logical, it's true. Steve Dufour (talk) 23:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between media criticism and personal attacks. Citing the Columbia Journalism Review is a clue as to which one is being engaged in. — goethean ॐ 00:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that many undecided voters read the CJR. But I am confident that Barack will win anyway. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 20:57, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

15,000 geeks

I removed the mention of the number of complaints that AP received about one of her stories, and then it was put back. In today's cyber-connected age 15,000 e-mails is not all that notable. (I'm guessing they didn't take the time to send in paper letters.) BTW I was also assuming good will in calling them "geeks", that is smart people who are a bit clueless about human relationships. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 21:01, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

That's all fairly subjective. The article did make a point to illustrate 15,000 emails, an the implication is that its a lot. I'm sure they receive statistical amounts of email about subjects, and by their measure its a lot. That's their perspective, and we document perspective.Yeago (talk) 21:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

They might have been Rush Limbaugh Operation Chaos operatives. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 21:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Haha, you might be right.Yeago (talk) 00:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

8 July 08 controversy

Coverage of the 8 July 08 controversy should be compressed. We only need to mention what her article was criticized for, not the whole story. — goethean ॐ 02:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why you think so, and I can't yet even quite agree with your characterizations: what "whole story"?; "coverage" is the wrong word. The discussion is already brief enough. No part of it is extraneous or superfluous to explaining why Pickler's report could be considered unprofessional. For example, the part about a report by Bloomberg News Service is crucial to establishing the point that information that would undermine the thrust of her reporting was published in plenty of time for her to see it before she filed her report. Hurmata (talk) 05:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

MMfA is not RS

I note Croctotheface has raised an issue from this page (whether MMfA is a RS) here and it was determined MMfA was not a reliable source on this page, essentially confirming my removal of the MMfA ref. I mention this so others may have a say if they wish on the RS noticeboard and so the MMfA link will not be restored. (I would have appreciated Croctotheface informing me that he took my edit to the RS noticeboard.) --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

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