Covering The Amish
(Getty Images/Mark Wilson)
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October 16, 2006 12:35 PM In covering the shooting of five young girls at a schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pa., reporters encountered an enhanced version of the conflict that often arises between the media and residents of a community besieged by national attention. Correspondent Tracy Smith told us about her approach to the story, given the Amish culture’s aversion to being photographed. The Washington Post’s Deborah Howell takes on the issue today, speaking with some of the photographers and editors who managed the paper’s coverage to find out how they approached the story.
October 5, 2006 11:15 AM 
The experience of a small town besieged by media attention is always a struggle, both for residents and those covering them. That challenge seems elevated, however, in the case of the Amish school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pa., since the Amish culture is one that prefers not to call attention to itself. The Amish are also quite averse to being photographed, which poses an obvious challenge for television reporters in particular. Correspondent Tracy Smith has been reporting on this story for “The Early Show” and below, she discusses how she has gone about approaching members of the Nickel Mines community with those considerations in mind.
I knew driving down here that this was going to be a tough story to cover on a number of levels. It’s always difficult, both personally and professionally, to do stories about the deaths of children, especially an incident like this, so violent and so senseless. And this happened in the Amish community, where, in general, people don’t want to be photographed, let alone talk on camera. The reason, as I understand it, is that they don’t want to glorify the individual, that modesty before God is one of the key aspects of the Amish faith and life. So on my drive down here, I spoke with a print reporter who covers the Amish community regularly to get some guidelines. She said if we kept a respectful distance and asked before shoving a camera in someone’s face (something I’d like to think I do in most situations), we should be OK. I also read some research I’d pulled on the Amish, which explained why they don’t use electricity, watch TV, drive cars.
Residents here have been patient and kind in explaining this community to me, and though I still have a lot to learn about them, I have profound respect for what they believe and how they live their lives.
I’ve tried to let community members approach me, instead of approaching them, by making eye contact, smiling, just being unobtrusive and polite. That’s how I met the Amish woman who agreed to be interviewed in silhouette the other day. [You can watch that segment .]
Nickel Mines Shooting: Covering A Reclusive Community
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
I knew driving down here that this was going to be a tough story to cover on a number of levels. It’s always difficult, both personally and professionally, to do stories about the deaths of children, especially an incident like this, so violent and so senseless. And this happened in the Amish community, where, in general, people don’t want to be photographed, let alone talk on camera. The reason, as I understand it, is that they don’t want to glorify the individual, that modesty before God is one of the key aspects of the Amish faith and life. So on my drive down here, I spoke with a print reporter who covers the Amish community regularly to get some guidelines. She said if we kept a respectful distance and asked before shoving a camera in someone’s face (something I’d like to think I do in most situations), we should be OK. I also read some research I’d pulled on the Amish, which explained why they don’t use electricity, watch TV, drive cars.
Residents here have been patient and kind in explaining this community to me, and though I still have a lot to learn about them, I have profound respect for what they believe and how they live their lives.
I’ve tried to let community members approach me, instead of approaching them, by making eye contact, smiling, just being unobtrusive and polite. That’s how I met the Amish woman who agreed to be interviewed in silhouette the other day. [You can watch that segment .]
February 17, 2006 5:18 PM
Is The Press Going To Change The Way It Covers Dick Cheney?
Yesterday, the Hotline's Marc Ambinder wrote a blog post suggesting that, in the wake of Vice President Cheney's hunting accident, "major television networks and some print entities are trying to figure out a way to follow the Vice President during his weekend sojourns."
The post did not say that any media outlet had decided to change its strategy for covering Cheney, whose schedule, unlike that of the president, is often kept private, making it difficult for the press to keep tabs on him. But the headline claims that media outlets will "ramp up efforts to track Cheney," and the piece says that among the ideas being discussed by the networks is to establish "an informal pool to stake out the Naval Observatory and to exchange, on a limited basis, editorial information to facilitate that pool."
I spoke to Janet Leissner, the CBS News vice president and Washington bureau chief, about whether CBS News and the rest of the media was considering covering Cheney differently. Leissner, who presently chairs the network pool, told me that there is no serious discussion taking place about forming a pool to stake out the Naval Observatory. She also said that she doesn't believe that the vice president will be covered differently in the future than he was prior to the hunting accident.
"This isn't a question of resources, this is a question of access," she says. "When we have access to public figures, we send reporters and producers and camera crews to cover them. But the vice president was on private property. It doesn't make sense to stand five miles down the road from a ranch where the vice president might be quail hunting with all the resources in the world if you can't get in there."
Both Leissner and Ambinder, who I also spoke to for this post, say it would be impractical to stake out the Naval Observatory for multiple reasons, among them the facility's multiple entrances and the fact that the vice president is often not there. But Ambinder says that there are serious discussions taking place within media organizations about how better to cover Cheney, and maintains that staking out the Naval Observatory is under discussion, at least at some outlets.
Ambinder, who notes that Leissner is "a very well respected news manager," also says he finds it "a little bit depressing" that she believes that Cheney cannot be covered more effectively. "If she says it can't be done, then it probably can't be done. But the vice president is the second most powerful person in the world, and that to me at least warrants the old college try to do more," he says. "This incident does seem to call for a more aggressive approach to reporting on the vice president's activities, particularly as they relate to out of state travel."
The post did not say that any media outlet had decided to change its strategy for covering Cheney, whose schedule, unlike that of the president, is often kept private, making it difficult for the press to keep tabs on him. But the headline claims that media outlets will "ramp up efforts to track Cheney," and the piece says that among the ideas being discussed by the networks is to establish "an informal pool to stake out the Naval Observatory and to exchange, on a limited basis, editorial information to facilitate that pool."
I spoke to Janet Leissner, the CBS News vice president and Washington bureau chief, about whether CBS News and the rest of the media was considering covering Cheney differently. Leissner, who presently chairs the network pool, told me that there is no serious discussion taking place about forming a pool to stake out the Naval Observatory. She also said that she doesn't believe that the vice president will be covered differently in the future than he was prior to the hunting accident.
"This isn't a question of resources, this is a question of access," she says. "When we have access to public figures, we send reporters and producers and camera crews to cover them. But the vice president was on private property. It doesn't make sense to stand five miles down the road from a ranch where the vice president might be quail hunting with all the resources in the world if you can't get in there."
Both Leissner and Ambinder, who I also spoke to for this post, say it would be impractical to stake out the Naval Observatory for multiple reasons, among them the facility's multiple entrances and the fact that the vice president is often not there. But Ambinder says that there are serious discussions taking place within media organizations about how better to cover Cheney, and maintains that staking out the Naval Observatory is under discussion, at least at some outlets.
Ambinder, who notes that Leissner is "a very well respected news manager," also says he finds it "a little bit depressing" that she believes that Cheney cannot be covered more effectively. "If she says it can't be done, then it probably can't be done. But the vice president is the second most powerful person in the world, and that to me at least warrants the old college try to do more," he says. "This incident does seem to call for a more aggressive approach to reporting on the vice president's activities, particularly as they relate to out of state travel."
February 15, 2006 5:00 PM
Cheney Speaks: Less Filling, More Speculation
How do you solve a problem like trying to prove a negative? While it used to be that rumors, innuendo and speculative detective work on news events would sort of roll around the backyard fence or water cooler, grow and morph until it all resembled a kind of conspiracy theory or urban legend – tales largely considered untrue yet still containing some shred of believability. A couple of the lasting examples are the assassination of President Kennedy and the fabled UFO landing in Roswell, New Mexico. Who among us hasn’t from time to time wondered about the real truth behind those stories?
In 2006, of course, these stories can pop up in a matter of hours and spread from one end of the Internet to the other almost instantaneously. Speculation surrounding the shooting of a fellow hunter by Vice President Cheney has illustrated this point rather dramatically. The assertion has been raised about whether or not Cheney had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the shooting, whether that is why it took so long for the story to be told to the media or why Cheney did not meet with local authorities until the next morning.
Well, mystery solved – sort of. Appearing on the Fox News Channel this afternoon, anchor Brit Hume talked about his just-taped interview with Cheney, the first he’s given since the shooting. Here’s how Hume characterized that issue:
In 2006, of course, these stories can pop up in a matter of hours and spread from one end of the Internet to the other almost instantaneously. Speculation surrounding the shooting of a fellow hunter by Vice President Cheney has illustrated this point rather dramatically. The assertion has been raised about whether or not Cheney had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the shooting, whether that is why it took so long for the story to be told to the media or why Cheney did not meet with local authorities until the next morning.
Well, mystery solved – sort of. Appearing on the Fox News Channel this afternoon, anchor Brit Hume talked about his just-taped interview with Cheney, the first he’s given since the shooting. Here’s how Hume characterized that issue:
He said he’d had a beer at lunch and that had been many hours earlier. It was dusk, around 5:00 p.m., when this incident happened, and he said that they had lunch out in the field, a barbecue, he had a beer. But he said you don't hunt with people who were drinking, he said no one was drinking. He said they went back to the ranch afterward, took a break after that and went back out about 3:00 and so you're four or five hours distanced from the last alcohol that he consumed and he said nobody was drinking, not he, not anybody else.Well, that clears that up. Or does it? Do you really believe everyone will just say, one beer? Okay, nothing to see here, move along. That is certainly unlikely to happen, especially given the fact that many outlets have printed statement from Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, denying any alcohol use at all.
February 14, 2006 1:12 PM
A Notebook Moment
Finally, proof that Dick Cheney and Howard Dean aren't so different after all.
You remember the Dean scream, right? After a disappointing third place showing in the Iowa caucuses in January 2004, Howard Dean's speech before his supporters included a yelp – well, a yeeeeeeeearrrrrrhhhhh, really – that the press corps and late night comics seized on as evidence that Dean is an angry hothead, a presidential candidate "with the personality of a hockey dad," in the words of David Letterman. It didn't matter that the ill advised yelp, which really wasn't all that bad in the first place, was hardly evidence of presidential competence, or lack thereof. The scream helped kill Dean's candidacy because it gave reporters and commentators a chance to unload all of their suspicions about the surprise frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, suspicions they hadn't been able to tie to a story previously. It allowed them to empty out their notebooks – to tie a campaign's worth of misgivings about the candidate to one seminal moment.
Dick Cheney, six years into his vice presidential tenure, is now experiencing much the same phenomenon. The Cheney shooting would have been big news no matter what, of course: In case you're forgotten, the vice president of the United States shot a 78-year-old man in the face. But the coverage of what seems to have been, ultimately, a pretty routine hunting accident has been nothing less than overwhelming. Front page play in the Washington Post and New York Times yesterday, along with multiple stories in each today; top story treatment on last night's CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News; and prominent play on the cable news networks and news Web sites.
The poor handling of the event by the White House didn't help matters. In a comment he jokingly admitted was in "terrible taste," Howard Kurtz pointed out that "the White House shot itself in the foot" by not immediately releasing the news and offering up its own spin. (It opted instead to leave the task to a private citizen.) "Seriously," Kurtz wrote, "[w]hat were they thinking?...the administration essentially thumbed its nose at the national press."
But while the news was handled badly, not informing the national press about the shooting for nearly a day was, while irresponsible, a fairly minor transgression in the grand scheme of things. This was not, after all, a case of misrepresenting intelligence or denying sexual relations with "that woman." It was neglecting to take the proper public relations strategy in the immediate wake of a hunting accident.
You remember the Dean scream, right? After a disappointing third place showing in the Iowa caucuses in January 2004, Howard Dean's speech before his supporters included a yelp – well, a yeeeeeeeearrrrrrhhhhh, really – that the press corps and late night comics seized on as evidence that Dean is an angry hothead, a presidential candidate "with the personality of a hockey dad," in the words of David Letterman. It didn't matter that the ill advised yelp, which really wasn't all that bad in the first place, was hardly evidence of presidential competence, or lack thereof. The scream helped kill Dean's candidacy because it gave reporters and commentators a chance to unload all of their suspicions about the surprise frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, suspicions they hadn't been able to tie to a story previously. It allowed them to empty out their notebooks – to tie a campaign's worth of misgivings about the candidate to one seminal moment.
Dick Cheney, six years into his vice presidential tenure, is now experiencing much the same phenomenon. The Cheney shooting would have been big news no matter what, of course: In case you're forgotten, the vice president of the United States shot a 78-year-old man in the face. But the coverage of what seems to have been, ultimately, a pretty routine hunting accident has been nothing less than overwhelming. Front page play in the Washington Post and New York Times yesterday, along with multiple stories in each today; top story treatment on last night's CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News; and prominent play on the cable news networks and news Web sites.
The poor handling of the event by the White House didn't help matters. In a comment he jokingly admitted was in "terrible taste," Howard Kurtz pointed out that "the White House shot itself in the foot" by not immediately releasing the news and offering up its own spin. (It opted instead to leave the task to a private citizen.) "Seriously," Kurtz wrote, "[w]hat were they thinking?...the administration essentially thumbed its nose at the national press."
But while the news was handled badly, not informing the national press about the shooting for nearly a day was, while irresponsible, a fairly minor transgression in the grand scheme of things. This was not, after all, a case of misrepresenting intelligence or denying sexual relations with "that woman." It was neglecting to take the proper public relations strategy in the immediate wake of a hunting accident.
February 14, 2006 12:00 PM
Cheney, The Sheriff And The Secret Service, Did CBS Misfire?
Much like the White House’s response to questions surrounding the accidental shooting of a hunting partner by Vice President Dick Cheney, it’s taken us a little time to gather up the facts in response to questions about CBS News’ reporting of it. Since yesterday, we’ve received many e-mails with the same theme, voiced below by reader Mike B., regarding a story posted on CBSNews.com:
It appears that CBS has scrubbed an entire section of a story concerning Cheney's accident with a shotgun. This raises serious questions about the journalistic integrity of CBS News. From the deleted portion of the story:I asked Maer, who responded with the following e-mail:
"CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer reports Texas authorities are complaining that the Secret Service barred them from speaking to Cheney after the incident."
Did Mr. Maer get the story wrong? Why was the section deleted rather than corrected or retracted? Did anyone connected to the administration or the GOP request that Maer's reporting be removed? These conflicting stories and apparent attempts to cover up this story suggest that something more malicious occurred this weekend, and that the administration IS trying to cover it up.
Here's what happened:
Yesterday (Monday) morning Kenedy County Texas Sheriffs Lt. Juan Guzman told CBS Station KNX that Secret Service agents prevented a deputy from immediately questioning Cheney. I immediately called the Secret Service seeking a comment on the report. The service's first response was, "We'll look into it." We went on the air (and on the Web) with the story as it developed; airing tape on radio and quotes on-line from the Sheriff's official along with the Secret Service's promise to look into it.
I pursued many many calls to various Secret Service officials throughout the afternoon. It took the Secret Service several hours to come up with an explanation. At approximately 2:45p.m., the Secret Service issued a timeline that started with the time of the shooting and included first word that the Resident Secret Service Agent had worked out an agreement with the Kenedy County Sheriff for a deputy to question Cheney the morning AFTER THE SHOOTING. A Secret Service spokesman confirmed that at least one deputy had been barred from the ranch shortly after the shooting because "people on the ground" were unaware of the agreement for Cheney to be interviewed. Much of that information aired on CBS News Radio. It was also passed on to CBSNews.com (where I hope it appeared.)
So to answer the reader's question, we did not "get the story wrong." We reported it as it developed. I obviously resent any notion that the White House or GOP could "gag" our reporting on this or any other story.
February 13, 2006 11:33 AM
Why Did It Take More Than 18 Hours For The World To Find Out About The Cheney Shooting?
I imagine you were as surprised as I was yesterday to discover that Dick Cheney has joined a very exclusive club: Sitting Vice Presidents Who Have Shot Someone. (The only other member, as far as I know: Aaron Burr, who famously killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel – and then served out his term.)
There are a lot of questions surrounding the shooting of 78-year-old millionaire lawyer Harry Whittington, who is now in the hospital recovering from a blast of birdshot to his face, neck and chest, but we're concerned with the media angle – namely, if this happened around 5:30 PM Saturday, why didn't news of it come out until Sunday afternoon? It seens to have fallen to the owner of the ranch where the incident took place, Katherine Armstrong, to inform the media what happened. As the Washington Post points out, "Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account."
Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell reports that the reporter from the Caller-Times, Jaime Powell, got the tip thanks to a "strong source relationship" with Armstrong. "…it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter…had not received word from the ranch owner," writes Mitchell.
In case you're having trouble reading between the lines: It looks like the White House thought it best not to let anyone know that the Veep had shot someone in the face.
As Mitchell points out, the Chicago Tribune's Frank James articulated the problem with that on the Tribune's Washington Bureau blog: "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?"
There are a lot of questions surrounding the shooting of 78-year-old millionaire lawyer Harry Whittington, who is now in the hospital recovering from a blast of birdshot to his face, neck and chest, but we're concerned with the media angle – namely, if this happened around 5:30 PM Saturday, why didn't news of it come out until Sunday afternoon? It seens to have fallen to the owner of the ranch where the incident took place, Katherine Armstrong, to inform the media what happened. As the Washington Post points out, "Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account."
Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell reports that the reporter from the Caller-Times, Jaime Powell, got the tip thanks to a "strong source relationship" with Armstrong. "…it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter…had not received word from the ranch owner," writes Mitchell.
In case you're having trouble reading between the lines: It looks like the White House thought it best not to let anyone know that the Veep had shot someone in the face.
As Mitchell points out, the Chicago Tribune's Frank James articulated the problem with that on the Tribune's Washington Bureau blog: "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?"
