Category / Journalism

by Edward Champion

Another Crime, Another Cultural Scapegoat

So now we have a case where Stanley Kubrick is going to be blamed for a violent crime. Three teenagers, obsessed by A Clockwork Orange, set fire to a homeless woman. The woman died in a hospital. Here are the questions that I would like to know and that should be asked of the 16 year old referred to as Juan Jose and the two 18 year old kids, Ricard Pinilla and Onol Pinilla.

  • How were they raised by their parents? And why is there nothing here in the article on this?
  • Do these three kids have any history of violent behavior? Given the fact that they publicly boasted about the crime, was this a savage cry for attention?
  • How does recording violent attacks on a mobile phone and exchanging pictures by email have anything to do with A Clockwork Orange or Counterstrike? It suggests to me instead a pathological impulse that originates from within. (Further, the homeless man in A Clockwork Orange is stabbed and beaten up and there is no gasoline poured on anyone throughout the movie. Could it be that they developed the burn-someone-with-solvent idea from their own minds?)
  • Why even have a sidebar devoted to Kubrick’s wishes to withdraw the film when the crime is still being investigated and the corollaries are so flimsy?

Have today’s journalists removed themselves from doing the proper legwork? Here, not even the London Times can support the thesis, much less shine the arc into some of those pivotal gray areas. Or maybe the Times would rather sell papers than perform an investigation into the factors that cause juveniles to commit crimes.

by Edward Champion

Lies, Damned Lies and Freakanomics

Freakanomics. Like every sophisticated American looking for a conversational entry point at a cocktail party, you’ve read it and been astounded by the conclusions. Yes indeed, Virginia, economics can be applied to everything! As per the free associative argumentative style that seems to run rampant and unchecked in today’s popular nonfiction titles. (Thank you, Malcolm Gladwell, for opening that Pandora’s box.)

Well, as it turns out, the two Steves got the economics wrong. Two economists (both of them, strangely enough, named Chris, proving an economic equation I’ve always found true: Two Steves + Two Chrises = Mayhem) from the Federal Reserve Bank have come forward, finding the research and statistics to be of questionable value.

Economist Christopher Foote notes that he spotted a missing formula in Steven Levitt’s initial research and that this programming oversight makes Levitt’s conclusion that the legalization of abortion reduced crime rates invalid. Apparently, Levitt failed to account for the crack wave of the 1980s and 1990s and, Foote says, Levitt’s failure to count arrests on a per-capita basis renders the abortion effect null and void.

This isn’t the first time that Levitt’s conclusions have come under attack, but this is the first time a high-profile economist has taken on Levitt at length. Levitt says that he hasn’t changed his stance and that the abortion effect holds true in Canada and Australia. Levitt himself has responded to these charges on his blog, noting that he will post a lengthy response once he has fully parsed Foote and Goetz’s paper. For the moment, Levitt confesses that he’s embarassed that he forgot the pivotal data, but insists that the data still matches up “when you run the specifications we meant to run.”

I’m quite curious about the viability of the abortion effect myself, but I’m quite surprised to see one of the world’s top economists insist that his hypothesis is right without actually running any results. I’m no scientist, but I know that my high school chemistry teacher would never give me a pass until I had proven a hypothesis. (The exploding test tubes that resulted from these experiments are another story.)

So, Dr. Levitt, when will you run these specifications? This correspondent, for one, will be watching.

by Edward Champion

Edward Guthmann, Plagiarist?

Looks like San Francisco Chronicle reporter Edward Guthmann has been caught plagiarizing the New Yorker. I’m truly sorry to hear this, as I had several great conversations with Guthmann back in the days when I practiced film criticism and though him a decent person and a decent writer. Knowing what little I know about Guthmann, I’m truly shocked that he did this.

[1/25/06 UPDATE: I’ve been in touch with Edward Guthmann. There are a few things that should be noted:

1. According to this SF Weekly piece, Guthmann confesses that the so-called plagiarism was unintentional, “During the months I worked on the piece, I gathered a huge amount of research and interview transcripts that I stored in computer files. At one point, I read about the 1,000th suicide in the New Yorker article and pasted two sentences in my text as a ‘flag’ — a reminder to myself to mention the fact. But when I went back to the piece, which may have been days later since I had other work during that time, I forgot those weren’t my words. I should have set them in boldface or larger type, or not moved them at all. Huge mistake — and especially heartbreaking, since I worked so hard on the piece and, apart from those two sentences, I think it’s my best work.”

2. During the course of the online investigation, nobody (including myself) thought to contact Guthmann himself. While the Vidiot’s coverage was quite fair, hopefully this will serve as a reminder to bloggers that it’s important to hear multiple sides of the story, particularly the persons who are accused of the charges.

I leave all the results here for readers to make up their minds.]

[1/25/06 UPDATE 2: Vidiot informs me that Guthmann was cc’d in his email to the Chronicle ombudsman. So there were some efforts to contact Guthmann.]

by Edward Champion

Mike Wallace & Bill O’Reilly Buddies?

Stamford Advocate: “‘I should probably confess that he’s a friend of mine,’ he said, smiling. ‘But he acknowledges that he’s playing a role. He has a style that he’s developed that has attracted an enormous amount of attention.’ O’Reilly also has been lending advice on how to sell books while on the promotional circuit, Wallace joked.”

I can only imagine them ordering dinner together: “Shut up! You’re wrong about the creme brulée, Mike, and you know it!”