Lecture: Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect, offered NYU journalism students his perspective on two subjects he is very familiar with: the Democratic Party and the media.
Photo: Kaitlin Bettick. © Kaitlin Bettick, 2004.
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"There's so much to talk about," said Robert Kuttner, to his audience in the Fifth Floor atrium of the NYU Department of Journalism on October 25, 2004. Considering Kuttner's background, it's a masterpiece of understatement.
Not only is he a widely respected journalist who co-founded and co-edits The American Prospect, a "magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics," but he also writes a weekly editorial column for The Boston Globe that is carried by 20 other newspapers nationwide. As if that weren't enough, he has appeared on news programs such as Crossfire and Nightline, where he comments on political and economical issues. Finally, he is the author of six books, most notably Family Re-union and Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets. In addition to his career in the media, Kuttner has taught at Boston University and Harvard University's Institute of Politics, among other schools. Does this guy ever sleep?
During his lunchtime talk (part of the Department's "Brown Bag" lecture series), Kuttner had politics, not journalism, on his mind. In pundit mode, he spoke about "why the democratic party is so screwed up." "[The Saturday Night Live actor] John Lovitz immortally said it, playing Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election, 'I can't believe I'm losing to this guy,'" said Kuttner. "That was—what?—16 years ago. And this has been a problem for Democrats for a few decades now; they can't believe they're losing to this guy."
Not only are the Democrats losing elections, said Kuttner. They're losing their base, as well. Because we live in a conservative country, argued Kuttner, the Democratic Party must be able to satisfy those who have supported them historically: the middle class and minorities. "The Democratic Leadership Council [is] preaching the message that the Democratic Party is too left wing. And so the question of whether it's too left wing on foreign policy, on gay rights, on abortion, on economic issues all gets kind of mushed together. My view is that if you deliver the goods on pocket-book issues, if you help the 70 to 80 percent of Americans who are economically insecure, they will cut you some slack on the other stuff. If you fight on the other stuff, the Republicans are going to beat you."
"Now I know you obsess around here about objectivity and fairness and all of that, but drawing conclusions in a news story based on evidence is not the same thing as opinion. I'm going to say that again: Drawing conclusions in a news story based on evidence is not the same thing as opinion journalism."
Kuttner asked if anyone in the audience had read Tom Frank's best-selling polemic, What's The Matter with Kansas? "You gotta read [this] book," he insisted. "This is as good a book as there is, with the possible exception of a similar book that I wrote in 1987, called The Life of the Party, on democrats being at odds with their base on pocket book issues. Frank's story, very simply, is guns, god, and gays; that kills the democrats, unless the democrats are really prepared to make a difference for ordinary people."
He went on to note that the party's base is "culturally and economically at odds with the party's elite." In Kuttner's opinion, the Bush administration's policies, especially its economic ones, don't affect Republicans as negatively as they do Democrats. There is no Republican counterpart to the "frustrated Democratic State Rep who's thinking of running for Congress and doesn't want to spend his whole life dialing for dollars," Kuttner claimed. "Republicans are not at odds with the people who vote for them. Affluent people raise money and vote for Republicans to carry out policies to help affluent people."
The media, in his opinion, are part of the Democratic party's problem. Although the news media have a reputation for being too liberal, he asserted, in actual fact they tend to tilt right. This is why he, former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and Princeton Professor Paul Starr founded The American Prospect. "We were all refugees from the New Republic," said Kuttner. "We all felt that the New Republic, which was once the great liberal magazine, had become center or center-right. And we felt that the absence of a magazine that was both mainstream and unapologetically liberal was helping push politics in America to the right."
Cover of The American Prospect.
Thus, Kuttner was relieved when The New York Times took what he believed to be a stand during the 2004 Election coverage. After about a year of what Kuttner called "dithering," the Times began drawing conclusions in its reported stories. The paper was no longer running around in circles, evading the obvious judgment, argued Kuttner. Instead, he asserted, Times writers began turning out pieces that provoked thought and challenged received truths. "Now, I know you obsess around here about objectivity and fairness and all of that, but drawing conclusions in a news story based on evidence is not the same thing as opinion," he said. "I'm going to say that again: Drawing conclusions in a news story based on evidence is not the same thing as opinion journalism." Journalists aren't doing their jobs if they simply juxtapose what two candidates say, implying that each position is equally valid, suggested Kuttner. In some instances, one candidate's statement simply does not accord with the facts of the matter, he implied. In such a situation, suggesting that both positions are of equal merit has more to do with self-censorship by journalists than a decree handed down by editors, argued Kuttner.
After Kuttner left Washington Place, the crowd buzzed with a renewed sense of how politics and the media interact. He had told a room full of student journalists about the Democratic party's woes, some of which he believed are media-inflicted. He had lamented the dearth of strong liberal voices on the national media landscape. And he had exhorted reporters to take a more activist role, eschewing the practice of reporting all sides of an issue with equal weight, in the name of "objectivity." In the best tradition of activist journalism, he had provoked thought and stirred debate—a debate that continued even after he had left the building.