Figuring out feminism (cont'd).

Bloody Sunday 

We want to bring to your attention many errors of fact contained in Who Stole Feminism?, by Christina Hoff Sommers, that concern our organization, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting). Her description of our educational campaign against domestic violence, which was launched in association with the 1993 Super Bowl, is riddled with mistakes....

In essence, FAIR and its leaders and named individuals stand accused of being liars.... Our integrity is attacked--yet, as we demonstrate in the following points, the details of Sommers's accusation that we intentionally disseminated falsehoods are inaccurate. As you know, falsely accusing people of being liars is defamation per se.

Here are some of the outright errors in Sommers's account of the Super Bowl campaign.

1. Sommers writes that there wasn't "any basis for saying that there was a significant rise in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday." This is a false and defamatory statement, implying that FAIR and other groups maliciously invented a connection between domestic violence and the Super Bowl. In fact, FAIR's January 18, 1993, news release spelled out the grounds for making this assertion: "Women's shelters report that Super Bowl Sunday is also one of the worst days of the year for violence against women in the home." FAIR has released a list of names and phone numbers of shelters and battered women's advocates that we contacted to confirm this statement. We also cited press reports from the New York Times and Chicago Tribune on the Super Bowl/domestic violence connection. To say that we had "no basis" for making our assertion is a reckless attack on our integrity.

2. Sommers writes: "At about this time a very large media mailing was sent by Dobisky Associates, FAIR's publicists, warning at-risk women: 'Don't remain at home with him during the game.'" In fact, Dobisky Associates has never done any publicity for FAIR, and we had never heard of the firm until it was attacked in press reports at the time of the Super Bowl. The false statement inaccurately links FAIR with errors Sommers attributes to Dobisky Associates. Sommers's false accusation would not have occurred if she had bothered to contact FAIR.

3. Sommers turns around the relationship between the press and FAIR's educational campaign. She has journalist Robert Lipsyte being "persuaded" by our claims of a Super Bowl/domestic violence link, saying he "joined in" with reports of a connection. Since Lipsyte first reported on such a link in January 1987 (NBC News), and then again in January 1992 (New York Times), a year before our campaign, he could hardly have been "persuaded" by us to "join in." Sommers's wording inaccurately implies that reporters like Lipsyte were duped by FAIR.

4. Sommers misrepresents what was said at a January 28, 1993, news conference about domestic violence in Pasadena, California, which was organized by FAIR's Los Angeles affiliate and featured feminist leaders and L.A. County District Attorney Gil Garcetti. (Sommers places this news conference on the wrong date, "January 27"; the three dates in her "chronology" are all matched with the wrong days of the week.) Sommers writes that reporters were informed that Super Bowl Sunday is "the biggest day of the year for violence against women." This quote irresponsibly distorts what was said. Speakers at the event emphasized that "anecdotal evidence" showed an increase in domestic violence on that day. The Associated Press quoted activist Sheila Kuehl as saying: "There is significant anecdotal evidence that Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for domestic violence against women." A complete quote would have debunked Sommers's contention that a statistically documented rise was being asserted.

5. Sommers also misrepresents Kuehl by saying she "cited a study done at Virginia's Old Dominion University three years before" in support of a prediction that "40 per cent more women would be battered on [Super Bowl Sunday]." In fact, as AP reported, "Kuehl said a study by sociologists at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, found that men are more likely to batter their partners after their favorite team wins. The study found that police reports of beatings and hospital admissions in northern Virginia rose 40 per cent after games won by the Washington Redskins during the 1988-89 season, she said." Sommers is inaccurate in writing that Kuehl used the Old Dominion study to make a prediction about Super Bowl Sunday.

These and other errors could have been avoided if Sommers had taken the elementary reporting step of interviewing the group she was preparing to criticize. The failure to take this step suggests malice and recklessness on her part....

Because of your irresponsible actions, our organization, its leaders and the specific FAIR associates named in the book suffer ongoing harm.

Jeff Cohen Executive Director FAIR New York, N.Y.

FAIR Is FAIR

FAIR is apparently still smarting from the Super Bowl gaffe. There they were, an organization dedicated to "Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting," and they not only failed to quash the baseless, malebashing canard that battery rises 40 per cent on Super Bowl Sunday but were found complicit in helping to promote it. FAIR sent a similar rant to the Washington Post soon after reporter Ken Ringle ran the original story exposing the Super Bowl hoax. The Post's ombudsman, Joann Byrd, then did a careful and polite evaluation of the complaints, which failed to mollify FAIR. Whereupon FAIR said that Ms. Byrd had "engaged in a semicoverup."

Jean Cobb of the American Journalism Review also looked into the dispute between FAIR and Mr. Ringle. Like Ms. Byrd, Ms. Cobb concluded "it appears that Ringle is right about the lack of solid data.... Indeed [we] tried to track down the elusive 40 per cent increase reported so readily in so many papers, but couldn't find any definitive source.... So it appears Ringle is correct; if there is any 'hard evidence' of a rise no one has come forward with the data."

Having gotten nowhere with Ken Ringle and the Post, FAIR now directs its outrage at me.

Sommers writes that there wasn't "any basis for saying that there was a significant rise in domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday." This is a false and defamatory statement, implying that FAIR and other groups maliciously invented a connection...

Despite the active role FAIR played in proliferating misandrist and socially divisive "facts," no one is suggesting that FAIR was the author of the Super Bowl hoax. As is evident from Mr. Ringle's investigation, the original source remains undiscovered.

The proximate sources are known, however. FAIR would now have it believed that Sheila Kuehl's 40 per cent figure given in interpretation of the Old Dominion research on the Redskin fans in '89 was not meant to be taken as an indication of what to expect on game day '93. But at the conference preceding the game, Ms. Kuehl had called attention to the Old Dominion research, and everyone naturally projected it. Nor did FAIR block that interpretation. What is more, FAIR sent out a mailing which stated that "women's shelters report a 40 per cent increase in calls for help during Super Bowl Sunday." On the day after Ken Ringle's expose, the Associated Press pointed out that "the talk was ignited by a news conference last week in which women's rights activists cited a new study reporting a 40 per cent increase in beatings following the annual football extravaganza."

Immediately after Ringle's expose, FAIR itself appeared to be contrite. Steve Rendall, FAIR's "senior analyst," admitted to the Boston Globe (February 2, 1993) that the 40 per cent figure was mistaken. "It should not have gone out in FAIR materials." By Washington's Birthday, FAIR was riding high again, boasting in its Los Angeles newsletter about how it had "faxed and called NBC to urge the network to air the Public Service Announcement during the Super Bowl broadcast, some of TV's most widely watched and expensive airtime." In allotting expensive airtime to ask its male viewers to keep calm, NBC showed that it too found something plausible in the proposition that American men, and more especially those who enjoy watching contact sports, are not to be trusted. In my studies of the powerful influence of gender feminism on American culture I have been repeatedly impressed with how easy it has been to persuade journalists and politicians that there is something fundamentally the matter with our male population.

FAIR has continued to be active in warning the public that our country is teeming with violently misogynist males. In the same February 1993 FAIR newsletter in which it boasts of its Super Bowl coup, it informs readers that the Surgeon General reports that domestic battery is "the leading health hazard for women between ages of 15 and 44." FAIR did not make this up either; it is a favorite with journalists. Senator Biden cites it. But as a selfproclaimed sentinel of accuracy, FAIR should have espied what reporter Joe Hallinan, writing in The Oregonian (July 7, 1994), discovered: this popular factoid too is baseless. Linda Saltzman, the researcher at the Centers for Disease Control who co-authored, with former Surgeon General Antonia Novello, the domestic violence report cited as the source of the "finding," categorically denies that this is what they found: "I spend my life trying to get it unattributed to us," she said. "I just think it's irresponsible for people to proliferate an incorrect statement." Here then is another item that should not have gone out in FAIR materials.

Battery shatters lives; those who suffer must be cared for and those who cause their suffering must be rendered incapable of doing further harm. But in all we do to help, reliable information is crucial. Truth is no enemy to compassion and falsehood is no friend.

Despite FAIR's claim that my account is "riddled with mistakes" they can only point to two small and inconsequential errors. Because I had dated the 1993 Super Bowl January 30 instead of the 31st, a few other dates were off by one day. Also, because I relied on an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (March 5, 1993), I misidentified Dobisky Associates as FAIR's publicist. Such errors will turn up and should be corrected. They do not, however, remotely affect the portrait of FAIR as a failed watchdog who, instead of barking an alarm, trots happily along with the burglars.

Christina Hoff Sommers Clark University Worcester, Mass.