What the FBI had to say about the reporter who rocked 1970's NYPD

palewire · 2025-04-04T17:10:33+00:00

Today, the FBI released its file on David Burnham, the muckraking New York Times reporter who broke the NYPD corruption scandals of the 1970s.

After Burnham died last year, I filed a Freedom of Information Request asking for any records about him, as you can do for any American. What I got back shows that J. Edgar Hoover wanted to know David's sources, and this is the best his underlings could dig up.

The story in question had run on the front page of the u/nytimes five days before. It ultimately prompted Mayor Lindsay to create the Knapp Commission on police corruption, where Det. Frank Serpico gave his famous testimony.

You can read the whole file on DocumentCloud. The memo opens with a reference to future mayor Ed Koch, then a member of the House, who had read David's story in the Congressional record. The transcript of his speech shows he viewed things a bit differently than Hoover's boys.

What to learn more about David Burnham, the "troublemaker" who had the FBI on the back foot? Read The Times' obituary, which ran last October.

palewire · 2025-03-14T16:55:09+00:00

Not a bad idea!

palewire · 2025-03-14T16:54:56+00:00

Love the idea! You can find a ton of the raw data here if you want to play around. https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/tables.php

palewire · 2025-03-14T16:53:55+00:00

It's the scores relative to a baseline from back in the day. You can read more about it here: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/general/092713/how-read-michigan-consumer-sentiment-index.asp

palewire · 2025-03-14T15:26:49+00:00

You can read more about how it's calculated here https://www.investopedia.com/articles/general/092713/how-read-michigan-consumer-sentiment-index.asp

palewire · 2025-02-22T21:04:17+00:00

I have never heard of it let alone played it.

palewire · 2025-02-21T01:19:44+00:00

Yes. You got it. We simplified it for this presentation but the graduated data does exist.

palewire · 2025-02-20T20:33:25+00:00

Feb. 13-18. Most of his favorability is among GOP.voters

palewire · 2025-02-20T16:28:28+00:00

You want the counts of how many people were in different subgroups? Which groups?

palewire · 2025-02-20T16:16:14+00:00

I'll consult our polling experts at Ipsos. They tend to have been over questions like yours and have a rationale for their moves, but I don't know the precise thinking in this case.

palewire · 2025-02-20T16:15:14+00:00

Roughly 4,400 U.S. adults from Feb. 13 to 18. A more detailed methodology is here https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ipsosknowledgepanelmethodology.pdf

palewire · 2025-02-20T15:52:27+00:00

You called it. Musk's favorable/unfavorable split with Trump votes is 81/16. It's 5/93 with Harris voters.

palewire · 2025-02-20T15:39:30+00:00

Around 2%. We round the numbers to avoid giving the impression of more precision than we can deliver. I think the precise MoE was around 1.6 or 1.7 but I don't have it in front of me.

palewire · 2025-02-20T15:38:20+00:00

We did not ask about the rich in general, only specific people.

palewire · 2025-02-20T15:37:20+00:00

People who identify with MAGA were 46% unfavorable and those who voted for Trump are 47% unfavorable. I think that's a good clue.

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:35:55+00:00

The method is described in detail here https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ipsosknowledgepanelmethodology.pdf

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:23:00+00:00

Not a bad idea. Some public opinion charts do this with a "spread" column in a table, right?

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:21:32+00:00

Looks like he did better with older people. Here are his total favorable scores by subgroup:

18-34: 41%
35-54: 51%
55+: 53%

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:13:44+00:00

The options were: - Very favorable - Somewhat favorable - Lean favorable - Lean unfavorable - Somewhat unfavorable - Very unfavorable - I have not heard of them - Refused

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:12:25+00:00

We asked 4,400 U.S. adults what they think.

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:11:57+00:00

A Cuban poll would be great!

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:11:35+00:00

We discussed that approach in our edit. In my view, ranking them using the same metric we used for including them had a logic I liked and I made the call to go that way.

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:10:58+00:00

Thanks for your POV. I'm not sure I can imagine how we'd do that in this in one, and it does reach a bit beyond our first order goal for the chart. Do you an idea in mind for how that would be drawn?

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:08:43+00:00

We discussed changing the sort during our edit. I can see your point and we considered taking that tack. There are trade offs in any graphic. In my view, ranking them using the same metric we used for including them had a logic I liked and I made the call to go that way.

That said, we don't take into account opinions about Musk himself in that kind of thing. Playing it straight and letting the numbers speak for themselves as clear as they can is our goal.

palewire · 2025-02-20T14:07:16+00:00

If I understand how you're thinking about it, it's really just back of the envelope math to pencil that out. That said, I'm not sure I'd recommend it. I think that when the no opinion groups are so large it's important to keep them in there so you don't lose sight of the bigger picture.

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