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April 25, 2004
Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That.""In our system, the press has the role of..." Generations of journalists spoke confident sentences like that. The press is a vital check on power. It's quasi-Constitutional. Bush, head of government, rejects this idea. That theory has gone down, he says. And you guys don't have that kind of muscle anymore.Mr. Bush managed to once more beguile the reporters with his Texas Churchillian rhetoric about America’s place in the world and his feelings about freedom. His non-answers hung in the air, blocking the vision and hearing like swarms of black flies, confusing and distracting the press, which seemed gaga and unable to bat them away. Mr. Bush, prepared, saw the questions coming. Everybody did. When he didn’t want to answer a question, he just moved to the next reporter, who generally felt honored to be called upon. —Joe Hagan, New York Observer, April 24, 2004 Data point: I read that. Then I got an email from a PressThink reader, Harris Meyer, a Florida journalist asking how any pundit, “particularly a liberal talking head like Auletta,” could, after watching Bush’s April 13 press conference, conclude what Ken Auletta of the New Yorker concluded in an interview with WNYC’s On the Media last weekend. I guess I would have to say the press lost. The president holds the cards. First of all, he dominates almost half the press conference with a statement. And then he chooses not to answer the questions. Now if, if someone had asked him a question that threw him off stride and caused a headline that - where he looked foolish, that would be one thing. But no one asked him that question. He did not behave foolishly. He’s not, obviously, the most fluent, articulate speaker, but Bush did better than, say, he did at his last press conference, or better than he did on Meet the Press. Meyer attached the transcript in his e-mail, a second data point. I had intended to read it, when I had the chance, because I’ve written about Auletta, and tapped his reporting on the Bush view of the press. But then I realized as I scanned the text: I did that same interview with On the Media. It was recorded it on Thursday (April 15) at WNYC with host Bob Garfield, a voice in my ear from Washington. The interview with Garfield (about ten minutes of Q and A) was blogging by radio. The occasion for it was something I posted at PressThink just before the news conference. There, I was trying to capture what was strange about this event: A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? So that’s what we talked about. But the producers told me on Friday they had decided not to air the Q and A, which happens frequently, for all kinds of reasons. (Producers have to make their calls; a wise radio guest takes no offense.) Third data point: my almost interview, an incomplete act of blogging by radio. Auletta was the right choice, anyway. Others have done the complaining. He’s done the reporting on the subject, pushing further into the mind of the White House than anyone else. To me, and to most journalists, this gives him unique authority to speak. A good radio show is about that. Auletta, for example, can describe Bush at a barbeque for the press in August, where a reporter says to the president: is it really true you don’t read us, don’t even watch the news? Bush confirms it. And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You’re making a powerful assumption, young man. You’re assuming that you represent the public. I don’t accept that. Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush’s people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone: That’s his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don’t accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of “Gotcha.” Oh, you’re interested in headlines, and you’re interested in conflict. You’re not interested in having a serious discussion… and exploring things. Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta’s reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren’t a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role— official or otherwise. Generations of journalists have been taught to believe differently. Their sentences start like this, “In our system, the press has the role of…” and then they go on to describe journalists as a check on power, which is quasi-Constitutional only because another part of the Constitution, the First Amendment, says you can’t lesiglate the role of the press. The Bush Thesis takes the “quasi” part and pushes on it. The thesis, in turn, is influencing policy: “why should we have to talk to you?” On the whole, Bush doesn’t. In January, Auletta reported that Bush had held eleven solo press conferences while president. Over a comparable period, his father had done seventy one and Bill Clinton thirty eight. The White House line when these figures come up is that the president just does things differently. He’ll meet reporters one on one, or answer questions in other venues. This defuses the issue. Meanwhile, a different line of argument is born. “Stiff ‘em, they don’t represent anyone. People are on to their game.” The “unrepresentative press” is a political conviction widely borne. Some of its strongest proponents are those who hold to the liberal media thesis. (Parts of which are more and more acknowledged in the media. See this from ABC’s The Note.) It’s also an attitude among the president’s most conservative supporters— many of whom don’t trust the press for the same reason they don’t trust teachers’ unions and trial lawyers. To them, a decision to “stiff” reporters, a conniving special interest, is not only acceptable conduct by a sitting president, but a refreshing policy change— and smart constituent politics. For the conservative populist in the Bush base, the White House press is a liberal elite. If its currency is questions put to the CEO, then you can de-fund the left by having the CEO not answer the reporters’ questions— on principle, as it were. (And no principle better explains the daily press briefings in the current White House.) Then there’s the resentment out there among supporters of the war in Iraq, who believe the press committed an outrageous lapse by not covering what was going right, ignoring a great story about democracy and freedom, in effect playing Gotcha in a war zone. (Glenn Reynolds, for example, here and here.) They too might warm to the Bush Thesis, which has not only its logic but a constituency out there. Previous presidents had the same resentments, of course, and drew cheers in parts of the electorate for voicing them. Previous presidents avoided the press, or routed around it with TV and photo ops. All presidents try to manipulate the news. It took until Bush the younger for the imaginative leap to be made: Attack the claim that any public interest at all is served by “meeting the press.” Remove the press from the system of checks and balances. Deny that it’s any “fourth branch of government” (Douglas Cater’s idea, 1959.) Don’t just work around a troublesome crew. Be bolder. Reject the reporters’ claim to be channelling the public and its questions. Not only that. In January, Auletta reported the following on the Bush Thesis: “the White House has come to see reporters as special pleaders,” an interest group “that’s not nearly as powerful as it once was.” Bush thinks the national news organizations don’t have the influence Richard Nixon and other angry presidents saw in them. Here the Bush Thesis is like a mafia read, a Sopranos script: “You don’t have that kind of muscle any more, so shut the f… up.” He basically said that. I don’t read you or watch your news. NPR? Sorry, I don’t listen. Am I out of touch with the American people? Nah, not worried about it. Playing Gotcha when America’s at war— now that’s out of touch! Fifth data point: at the top of the government, the press is seen as a declining power. Among various puzzles in the cluster of ideas I have called the Thesis, there’s: why did the Bush team feel comfortable placing hundreds of “special pleaders” with the tanks and troops invading Iraq? If the press doesn’t represent anyone, then by what logic did the administration agree to embed reporters? Another analysis must have taken hold. Here are several possibilties:
No doubt there are other possibilities beyond these. Data point, number six: The administration doesn’t always hold to the Bush Thesis. By April, Bush was under pressure from the 09/11 commission to answer more questions and release information. The occupation of Iraq had taken a dangerous turn. Richard Clarke’s book was causing a sensation in Washington. Approval ratings for the president’s handling of the war had slipped some. The normal confidence and discipline of the Bush White House had turned into rigidity amid shifting events. And at a moment of political trouble, preparations for a prime time press conference began with Bush, Karl Rove and his advisors. Data point: Bush—with Rove’s counsel—decided to meet the press when the president was in some trouble. Why, if he believes what he said in the summer? “You’re assuming that you represent the public. I don’t accept that.” Here, perhaps, the Bush Thesis weakened under the press of events. Or maybe not. Maybe it goes forward even in the exceptions. In preparing for the ritual, the White House team anticipates the questions the president will face, reviews his answers, underlines things to be said at any opportunity— emerging with The Talking Points. It’s up to Bush to synthesize this advice, and get comfortable with the answers he will give. Data point: Perhaps 90 pecent of the questions will have been guessed by the time he strides in. How is this even possible? Auletta has an interesting answer: Because meanwhile the press is getting its own talking points together: “They rehearse what is the question we’re going to ask that will shake the president off his talking points, that will force him into a moment where he gives us a candid response, or he shows vulnerability that gives us a gotcha moment or a wow moment.” The president has his scripted points, the reporters theirs— and neither will be moved off the script. The kind of question that cannot be predicted, of course, is one born live, a spontaneous response to something that happens at the press conference. Ted Koppel when he does Nightline prepares one question for each guest, the first one he will ask. Beyond that he wants everything to flow from what’s said on air. In the East Room ritual, with so much at stake (international embarrassment, for one) both parties cooperate to make sure the Koppel moment never happens. Data point: On April 13, they both read from their scripts. For the press, this meant: Were you at fault? Do you accept responsibility? Were there any mistakes? Going to apologize? “They repeated the question, because if the president was pre-programmed, so too, many reporters are pre-programmed,” Aultetta said. Brooke Gladstone, (see my earlier interview with her) then asked “how did this play as a media event? Who won or who lost?” His answers:
Harris Meyer wants to know: how could Auletta, operating in the role of pundit, conclude these things? Well, in order to say who won a White House press conference, you need in hand, prior to an up or down verdict, some intelligible standard for political achievement in press conferencing. For his standard Auletta goes back to the “drama” of confrontation, ritualized by the script— the predictable effort to knock the president off stride, the president’s determination to stay in form. You score the contest by whether the headlines say: Bush knocked off stride… If yes, they got to him. Press wins. If not, then he prevailed. No knock out, decision to Bush. So my answer to Harris is: don’t look at the Auletta verdict, look at the standard that created the verdict, which is not his personal handiwork but a common style of reasoning in Washington journalism, punditry and the political class. A typical example is this assessment from Adam Nagourney and Eric Litchblau in last Sunday’s New York Times: “Evaluating the 9/11 Hearings’ Winners and Losers.” It’s a news story about who came out looking good from the hearings, in the estimation of insiders and operatives. Thus Matt Bennett, a political consultant and Democrat, is quoted about commissioners Bob Kerrey and Richard Ben-Veniste: “They were a little too combative, and it sort of came off as a nasty spat.” That very peculiar construction, “it came off as…” identifies the “who won?” style of Beltway thinking. Some of its virtues are to be empty of political content, (and thus applicable to whomever is in power) agnostic on questions of truth, exacting on matters of appearance, preoccupied with positioning and technique, and with how things look to a hypothetical observer who is never quite identified. “How will this play, politically?” is the same mindset speaking. Recognize it? Come in with another standard, and the verdict changes. If transparency in government is the critical standard, and the press conference a means of achieving it, did Bush “win?” (I would say no.) If self-expression for the president—revealing what’s in his gut, displaying his convictions—is the standard, then the president probably achieved that. He won fuller expression as a man of resolve. If a clearer, fuller and more coherent explanation of policy is the right standard, and the press conference a kind of teaching platform that includes the press, then no one did very well. To me what’s amazing is how little is expected of Bush as an artful politician, even among his supporters. By taking a “buck stops here, you betcha I’m responsible” approach to the mistakes questions, he might have shown the mature, manly, quasi-heroic virtues for which he and the Bush family are admired by many Americans. Not that it would have been easy, but the proper kind of apology to the families could have transformed the entire political dynamic around 09/11. But no one expects such things of Bush. (See blogger Rand Simberg on the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in reviews of Bush’s performance.) A more skilled politician could have re-framed the June 30 date for passing “control” to the Iraqis and created room for himself, relaxing the pressure to phony up the import of the handover, which is now building as the press gets ready to observe progress on that date. Not even the minimal standard of appearing to answer questions you have actually skirted gets applied to Bush, for as Auletta observed he didn’t answer some, zoned out on others, and evaded in a flagrant way— yet still won the encounter. It’s a mystery to me why Bush’s political friends would be happy with any of this. The idea of the press as the “fourth estate,” which is the big idea Bush rejects, is usually traced to English historian Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881.) What Carlyle wrote puts a different light on Jeff Jarvis saying at Buzzmachine: send some bloggers to the White House press conference! I took him to mean that independent voices, writers representing no one but themselves and their public reputation, without rank or representation, should be in the mix with the press. Jeff meet Tom Carlyle, writing at a time when the press was newly arrived on the political stage: Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, …. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. ….. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. Whoever can speak to the whole nation becomes a power. There is still a reporters gallery, and it is still speaking the language of a Fourth Estate. But perhaps its weakness is in speaking a language Americans recognize as theirs. Bush is challenging the press: you don’t speak to the nation, or for it, or with it. (See Hagan on this point.) He cannot sustain this challenge all the time—thus, the April 13 press conference, thus the embeds—but it is a serious argument. Intellectually, it’s almost a de-certification move against the press corps. There’s a constituency for this, and it picks up on long-term trends that have weakened the national press, including a disconnect between Big Journalism and many Americans, and the rise of alternative media systems. As a first step out of this trap, journalists need to ask themselves: how did we become so predictable? Is it possisble to go back, and pull the wire that made this so? The game of Gotcha does exist. Auletta, a liberal journalist, can recognize it as easily as Karl Rove. Knock him off stride. Get him off the talking points. But instead of rolling our eyes, we ought to realize that Gotcha has been incorporated into a new thesis, now in power in the White House. Behold the basics of President Bush’s press think. You don’t represent the public. You’re not a part of the checks and balances. I don’t have to answer your questions. And you don’t have that kind of muscle anymore. After Matter: Notes, reactions and links… John Kerry tells the American Society of Newspaper Editors: if elected, he’ll have monthly news conferences. Editor and Publisher: “After the speech, when asked to elaborate on his feelings about the need for regular press events, Kerry declined to openly criticize Bush, but said press conferences were ‘an important forum and an important way to communicate with our country.’” Clearly, a difference between candidates. Listen to the Ken Auletta interview or read the transcript here. (WNYC) For an earlier Q and A with Auletta: Bush’s Press Problem. (New Yorker Online, Jan. 13, 2004) For Auletta’s Reporting: Fortress Bush (The New Yorker, Jan. 19, 2004) Jeff Jarvis at Buzmachine reacts to this post with this: Yet there are many who claim to represent us, The Public. Winning presidents and political parties do. The press does. But they don’t. Bush didn’t win the majority of votes; he doesn’t represent us. The same could be said of every President, since so many of us don’t vote. Nobody elected the press; they elected themselves. And they certainly don’t represent everyone since there are so many who don’t pay attention to them. Read the rest. One of Jeff’s titles is an advisory to the press: You don’t represent me; I hired you. And in the comments @ Buzzmachine reader and writer billg puts it exactingly: “It isn’t the job of the press to represent the people. It is the job of the press to report the news to the people. But, it isn’t the job of any single press entity to report all the news, all the time. The press isn’t doing its job when it stops reporting the news and replaces it with entertainment packaged as news, i.e., pundits, magazine shows, talk shows, etc.” I posted this in the comments at PressThink, to clarify what some readers may have missed: When Bush says to journalists “you don’t represent the public,” it means a bit more than reporters are unrepresentative, or their views unlike the views of most Americans. I believe Bush is challenging the very notion that journalism is conducted in the public interest, that the public’s right to know depends on the press finding things out. That’s quite different from “journalists are liberal, Americans on the whole are moderate to conservative,” which is not the point the President is making— even though he probably agrees with that too. (See comments for more.) Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) comments on this post: “The press, of course, is unrepresentative. It isn’t elected, nor — in its views, its background, and its personal characteristics — is it reflective of the public. (If the public thought like the press, no Republican would ever be elected President.) Nor does the public feel that it is represented by the press… But it’s certainly true that the notion of the professional press as a check on the government has no foundation. The Constitution envisions freedom of speech and of the press as checks — not the institution of the press as one. That’s a key difference, I think.” (See the comments of Ryan Pitts, a journalist, who replies to the “unrepresentative” charge at The Dead Parrot Society.) Roger Simon, novelist and blogger, dissents: “I’m not as convinced… that Bush is treating journalists in an entirely different manner from previous administrations. The attack on the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ from the Nixon years seems much more strident than the quote from Bush that Jay uses in his title. Yes, Bush’s has an element of dismissiveness about it and, yes, the use of embeds during the war smacked of cooptation, but I remain unconvinced that these developments are much more than normal executive reponse to an increasingly powerful and expanding media (term picked deliberately). It’s an old game.” Centerfield (the Centrist group blog) replies with Press Arrogance and the Bush Press Conference: The relationship of the Press and the Presidency is supposed to be speaking truth to power. Their freedom and intellectual opposition are supposed to encourage that to happen. But the press has a pretty miserable record of speaking truth to power during the Bush Administration. The press has been worse with facts than the Administration, and has gone after shadows much more often than real problems. Half-Bakered, a Memphis based blogger: “One place Rosen fails, I think, is that he casts doubt on the Bush administration’s belief in the Bush Thesis because the administration engages with it. Rosen doesn’t seem to see that the ‘press’ is unavoidable and must be engaged at least some times. That engagement isn’t a ‘failure,’ but a reality.” From the Left—Headblast by David Cogswell—there’s this summary of the Thesis and what it means: Bush has taken an extremely radical step in redefining the place of the press in American society. Bush said he does not accept that the press speaks for the people. He doesn’t recognize any obligation to answer questions of the press or deal with them in any way but however he feels like dealing with them. This is truly the most radical president to ever occupy the White House. Reviewing blog reactions to this piece, The Smallest Minority writes: “the interpretations of Bush’s position vary, bipolarly.” And one further thought of my own: After reading the many passionate comments here that welcome the Bush Thesis while articulating a deep disdain for the press, I wonder why so few of the President’s supporters seem concerned that a vital reality check may be lost to the administration, given what are seen as Big Journalism’s failures. On April 17, Glenn Reynolds—a supporter of the war—wrote this about events in Iraq: “Is our government doing a good job? It’s hard to tell. And the tendency, knowing that the media are overplaying some negatives, is to apply Kentucky windage and assume that things in general are better than they say. This may be true, but it may also be true… that there’s not just good news, but bad news, going unreported.” Reynolds continues: That’s especially unfortunate, because good reporting doesn’t just inform ordinary folks like us. It’s also a check on reports that flow up within the chain of command, making sure that real problems get noticed and not papered over. I’m afraid that the White House, understandably tired of the unrelenting negativity that has given us the Brutal Afghan Winter of 2002, the Invasion-Killing Sandstorm of 2003, and the Mass Popular Uprising of 2004, may have started tuning out negative reports. That would be a mistake… On the matter of the news media, I think many Bush partisans—not all, but a lot—drink so deeply of their resentments that they fail to ask whether there will be any costs to Bush himself when the discrediting, dismissing, disdaining and decertifying of Big Journalism is complete. Jeremy Bowers thinks about it: “As flawed as the press is, what other mechanism does the President have for communicating with us? If Bush turns his back on the press corps, what will he replace it with?” “Big Media—especially network television and daily newspapers—are rapidly losing their power to shape public consensus and marginalize ideological extremes.” Where was this argument made? In a news story, the Washington Post, April 25 “I think the ‘The Fourth Estate’ is beginning to get the theme that they’re increasingly irrelevant unless they start taking their own carefully tended memes a little less seriously. We may actually end up with a halfway decent press, somewhere down the road.” Scott Talkington, Demosophia (April 28.) Newspaper man turned blogger, Jon Donley of Dawnsinger, reacts to this post: ‘The Press’ doesn’t represent us.
Posted by Jay Rosen at April 25, 2004 1:28 AM
Comments
This is your usual brilliance, Jay. I'm working on a similar piece called, "News as a sporting event." I think there's another assumption that exists in the newsrooms of today that didn't exist when I first got into the biz (prior Watergate). The default position of contemporary reporters is that the elected don't represent the public (either), that they're all selfish crooks that can't be trusted, and that it is an awardable public service to prove it. This places the press at enmity with the elected before a thought is gathered or a word spoken. It's one-upsmanship gone to seed, and the public IS tired of it. Good piece. Posted by: Terry Heaton at April 25, 2004 9:58 AM | Permalink As a first step out of this trap, journalists need to ask themselves: how did we become so predictable? Is it possisble to go back, and pull the wire that made this so? The game of Gotcha does exist. Auletta, a liberal journalist, can recognize it as easily as Karl Rove. Knock him off stride. Get him off the talking points It's more than Gotcha that has lost journalists their legitimacy in the eyes of many Americans. You touched on it earlier, but were too ginger in so doing. It is very clear to me, a Baby Boomer, that the press for several decades has seen itself as the only TRUE holder of virtue and truth. Since before Watergate, an increasingly arrogant press with strong liberal bias has annointed itself in a self-authorized role of a) uncovering (the strongly presumed to exist) inadequacies and errors of government and b) promoting social policies that all right-thinking (i.e. liberal) people agree are obviously correct. I say this, mind you, as a life-long Democrat in her 50s. But one who is fed up with the fecklessness of the Democratic party, disgusted with the corruption and bias that has come to pervade the major media, and angry that important national and international issues cannot be seriously debated in this country due, in part, to that bias and corruption. Journalists have destroyed their own credibility and potential contribution to public affairs. The public by and large recognizes the smell of dry rot that wafts up from newspapers, drifts out from the TV news and fills the car along with NPR during rush hour. THAT is why Bush's approval ratings went up after the last press conference. Bush "won" because the press had long ago not only defined the interaction as a contest, they also did all they could to rig the result. And the public has decided that dog won't hunt anymore. Posted by: rkb at April 25, 2004 1:05 PM | Permalink The reporters represent a soap opera audience. Everything ties into some eternal drama that relates to the lives of the addicts (powerful man goes bad, ``How like my own life!''). It's a small audience, but the biggest reliable one they can get. Reporters who are good at feeding it, survive. It more or less takes over all the terrain, and waves of revulsion are the result. Rejection of that arrangement is popular, and there you are. It's a Princess Di orgy without the princess.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at April 25, 2004 1:09 PM | Permalink They don't speak for me. Neither did they when Clinton was in the White House. I would love to see a journalist report fact. They seldom do. When it happens, the facts are merely prepartory to the opinion. Did Watergate and the celebrity it brought to people like Woodward turn every reporter into a wannabe? You've produced a cogent look at the mood of the administration and the public, I think, Jay. Speaking personally, I would only add that I think the "Bush Thesis" is more strongly grounded in an existing public perception of the media. I don't think this is only politics--the "moderate to conservative" public versus the "liberal" media. I think it is in large part a function of common sense. The 9-11 commission testimony in particular seemed to beg the question: are we holding this administration to a realistic standard? The media seems to demand omniscience and omnipotence from elected officials, and this overbearing demand grates on the common sense of any individual that's ever dealt with a bureacracy, a committee decision process or an office hierarchy. I only began to really articulate this view myself after the "Texas Guard" scandal over Bush's missing paperwork. During the height of the unending media analysis of what documents were released and what documents weren't, I stumbled across a copy of my university transcript from a dozen years ago. I asked myself, "Despite these listed courses and these grades, could I prove I attended all these lectures? Could I prove I wrote the required essays and did all the required research?" That's a daunting prospect. I'm sure many professors during my undergraduate years wouldn't remember me. I'm quite sure many essays I wrote have disappeared into the circular file long ago. I have perhaps kept a few I thought were particularly good or had continuing value in my studies... But even after only a dozen years, I would find it hard to account for my attendance at and performance in each class. I barely remember some of them. Over time, I think it has dawned on much of the public that the media are indeed playing a "gotcha" game. Casual statements made in a general way meet with a demand to be roundly defended for logical consistency. Very informal and human impressions, inherently inexact and unstructured, are taken as the expected basis of policy--if the elected official doesn't follow their "throwaway statement" whole-heartedly, they're accused of "backing down" or "bowing to public pressure." We do expect more from our elected officials. We expect a higher sense of awareness of national and international events and we expect an air of sobriety and professionalism. I believe, however, the public is mature enough to avoid expecting a saint or a prophet. We understand bureacracy, we understand that mistakes occur in a rapid-fire work-flow, we understand that people occasionally say some things casually they don't seriously intend to translate into policy. If only the media held this realistic perception, and credit the public with at least this much wisdom, the "gotcha" game might become the exception rather than the rule. --ME Posted by: Mandrake Ethos at April 25, 2004 1:23 PM | Permalink Other significant facts that you left out are the decision to offer direct feeds from Iraq to local stations, thereby allowing local stations to work around the national media, and the Administration's practice of actively reaching out to smaller, local reporters and stations while simulatenously stiffing the majors. Posted by: Thom at April 25, 2004 1:31 PM | Permalink But perhaps its weakness is in speaking a language Americans recognize as theirs. Bush is challenging the press: you don't speak to the nation, or for it, or with it. Very interesting. I think many of Bush's critics — of which I am one — underestimate what Bob Woodward calls his "emotional intelligence," or his ability to understand what's on the mind of "Joe Public." Critics wanted to hear Bush admit in the press conference that the Iraq project is not working and, more importantly, his plan for fixing the problems (I did not understand, however, why reporters persisted in trying to get him to personally admit "mistakes" in an election year — by framing it this way, the press appears as a vicious persecutor, not as a seeker of truth). But Bush understands intuitively — which polls have since borne out — that most Americans don't want to hear about a plan or about Bush's mistakes; they want to be assured of their leader's resolve. That's because most Americans, according to the new PIPA poll, believe that Iraq is the cornerstone in the "War on Terror" (a term the press has wholeheartedly adopted) and therefore there's really no question about the staying the course. To me, the fundamental issue is why they believe such things. Is it because they're not sophisticated enough to distinguish between Saddam and Osama? Or is it because the press uncritically passed along the adminisitration's case for invading Iraq, which was conflated with the al Qaeda threat? I believe it's the latter. The press dug the hole in which it now finds itself. By lending credibility to the invasion, it's in no position to question the premises now. The public is not demanding answers because it doesn't see the questions. Bush is therefore correct in saying that the press is not representing the public, because the public doesn't believe Bush has done anything wrong. Posted by: Grant D. at April 25, 2004 1:32 PM | Permalink Here's my question: If the press is the Fourth Estate, where is the check on the press? Thank you for an insightful column! That's exactly it: the press and networks don't represent the people. They're just another special interest group, and not deserving of any more trust than any other such group--perhaps less, because of the stranglehold they've held on communication until recently. Posted by: James at April 25, 2004 1:39 PM | Permalink Grant D., the arrogance of this is breathtaking: "To me, the fundamental issue is why they believe such things. Is it because they're not sophisticated enough to distinguish between Saddam and Osama? Or is it because the press uncritically passed along the adminisitration's case for invading Iraq, which was conflated with the al Qaeda threat? I believe it's the latter. The press dug the hole in which it now finds itself. By lending credibility to the invasion, it's in no position to question the premises now. The public is not demanding answers because it doesn't see the questions. Bush is therefore correct in saying that the press is not representing the public, because the public doesn't believe Bush has done anything wrong." No matter how you sift it, you think Americans are either unsophisticated dolts or are empty-headed dolts who can be told what to think. The third alternative is that most Americans know how to use the resources at their disposal -- the internet -- to discover the truth the press have no interest in. People do see the questions; when they hear the answers, they realize that the ones from the press are biased and politically correct hedges that are dangerous to America's health. Therefore, what's the point in asking the press for the answers? Thus, Bush is right; the press no longer have the muscle of an earlier age, and he doesn't have to answer their questions. This is the age of bloggers fact checking the press and forcing changes and corrections. If President Bush wishes to talk to Americans, he surely doesn't need the unreliable and untrustworthy press to do that. Well said, Helen. Grant, your words are an example of the reason that the Democrats are in the process of being turned out of power. You won't admit to the possibility that someone might honestly disagree with you. No, it someone sees things differently than you, then they are either stupid ("not sophisticated enough to distinguish between Saddam and Osama") or mislead ("swallowed the adminisitration's case for invading Iraq, which was conflated with the al Qaeda threat"). Of course, it is neither. But you are, in fact, the stupid one here. Here's the real truth: Posted by: ray at April 25, 2004 2:29 PM | Permalink For a virtual caricature of the liberal mindset, scroll up to the comments by Grant D., which evidence a shocking inability to understand the War on Terror and Iraq's role in it, and no appreciation whatever of the public's ability, by contrast, to comprehend these things quite accurately, thank you very much. Then again, I'm assuming it was not intended as satire, but who knows. Posted by: Byron at April 25, 2004 2:54 PM | Permalink Here's David Gregory on Imus explaining his choice of questions at the Press Conference (``Any Presendent should be challenged'') http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.dgregory.ram Posted by: Ron Hardin at April 25, 2004 2:55 PM | Permalink You've essentially taken a simple idea and analyzed the reprecussions and foundations of that idea. That the press does not represent America is simple, and I think, obvious. Your contribution has been to set forth a very compelling discussion as to how the President sees this idea. Like millions of others, I sure hope the Bush doctrine you present (ignore the press)actually represents Bush policy. I would like to add one important point. You neglected to mention the influence of the Internet on the decline of the Press, even as you cited one of the Internet's heroes, Glenn Reynolds. Talk radio did a lot to chip away at the power of the establishment radio, to be sure, by demonstrating its biases and by reporting the news that the mainstream press "missed". But people can only listen to the radio in the car, more or less, and for only a short time during the day. If Talk Radion poked holes in the walls, the Internet has knocked it down. The only question in my mind is, to waht extent did the Press ever refelct public opinion in the first place? I don't think people'a mindsets have changed dramtically in the past 40 years or so. People today think pretty much the same way people did a few decades ago. The difference is that nowadays people have a means to share those views with others. In the pest, one could have thought his own views were unusual, hudging by what the press reported, and he would have kept those views to himself. Today however, people have learned not to beleive what they read in the papers. With this understanding, I think a serious rewriting of history is in order. Did the public really think ill of Joe McCarthy, as the press has reported for decasdes? Or is Ann Coulter on to something when she writes that his reputation was created by the liberal media, and not from the public? How enamored were Americans of the Civil Rights Acts and the Feminist movements? As time goes on, I think our history books will prove to be in for a major rehaul. Posted by: David at April 25, 2004 3:03 PM | Permalink That is a very interesting analysis. Those of us who support Bush would like to believe he will be successful. Many of us see the mainstream press as being strongly biased and also surprisingly ignorant. We see this even more in areas where we have personal knowledge, which supports our observation. I write as a Vietnam Veteran who also served in the Reserves, who joined the Navy 2 days after John Kerry, and whose best friend was killed doing the same thing as Bush (National Guard fighter pilot, treated by the Democrats and the press as the easy way out, implying cowardice). The "gotcha" game around Bush's guard service was not only biased but also amazingly ignorant about the military. The ignorance was obvious in the failure to even try to understand the actual workings of the National Guard (especially the Air Guard for pilots). The bias was evident in the focus on Bush without corresponding focus on Kerry, who has some very major activities and some widely publicized and very significant lies to explain. The media's credibility with veterans and current military personnel was not helped by that performance. Only now is the press looking at Kerry's "gotchas". But David Halbfinger's April 24 piece is carefully sanitized. It is written as if the Kerry's dirty laundry is being thoroughly aired, but in reality, the most damaging parts are white-washed or hidden. This is an old propaganda technique - show something that harms your position to establish your credibility, but mislead about or hide the most important issues. In particular: 1) The infamous "Winter Soldier" investigation is cleansed by the implication that other "investigations" that were not authentic, but the "Detroit investigation (actually the Winter Soldier investigation) took care to avoid imposters, In reality, the Detroit investigation that was the most famous and the most thoroughly riddled with imposters, credential exaggerators and false claims. The words "Winter. Soldier" do not appear in Halbfinger's piece at all, Jane Fonda's major involvement in the investigation is not mentioned, and subsequent thorough debunking of the investigation by Burkette and Whitley (Stolen Valor) and by military investigators is never mentioned. 2) The depth, breadth, tremendous dishonesty and general theme of Kerry's 1971 Senate Testimony are air-brushed away. The speech is analyzed here from a veteran's viewpoint, with a link to the full text at C-SPAN. There are only two small references to this long speech which was the turning point in Mr. Kerry's career and which had the most impact on the nation. 3) The mainstream press has not noticed the attempt by the Kerry campaign to cover-up the fact that he was a sworn Naval Officer in the Regular Reserves from 1970-1972, when he met with the enemy representatives in Paris, performed almost all of his VVAW activities, and gave his perjurious Senate testimony. Details on this cover-up (which included actions forced by the release of his military records) are here and here. The Boston Globe published a story that Kerry received an honorable discharge in 1970 (which would have left him a civilian). In fact he was not discharged until 1978. It is possible that the White House let the National Guard "gotcha game" continue so the press would expose their own bias and ignorance. Certainly having former Guardsmen and Reservists and their families hear their service denigrated (by implication) by the press, and specifically by Terry McCauliffe and other Democrats was an easy win for the White House. Anyone with military service or knowledge about it, watching the jackal herd in some of the White House press conferences, saw nothing but vicious, biased and ignorant people screaming for a "gotcha" that veterans doubted was there at all. I have long been a casual student of propaganda, having listened to Radio Moscow and Radio Havana since the early sixties. It was with some astonishment that I discovered in the '80s that CBS News had started to act as better propagandists against Reagan and his ideology than Radio Moscow. Things have only gotten worse since then. Those who reject the "liberal media bias" accusation should ask themselves why there is such a large audience for conservative talk radio, and such quick success for Fox News, while liberal talk radio fails except in a couple of "blue area" cities, and most other TV news outlets and newspapers are losing viewers and subscribers. The answer is not that the population outside of the blue counties are fools, dupes and uninformed. Instead, it is market saturation for leftward-slanted information by mainstream news and entertainment outlets. Rush Limbaugh's success started because he was supplying information that resolved the cognitive dissonance of many. Ordinary citizens could not reconcile their own knowledge and experience with the inexplicably contradictory information in the mainstream media - especially TV news. That Limbaugh is a master of his medium is of course important to his success, but it was the untapped market for alternative information that created the demand. The numerous other popular conservative talk show hosts of lesser talent buttresses this explanation. Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools) at April 25, 2004 3:36 PM | Permalink This feels like piling on, but the issue is so central I'm going to do it anyway. Grant D., you're an ass. But more importantly, you're a good example of the kind of pompous, superficial ass whose dominance in the press and in the Democatic party will get Bush re-elected. I'm not particularly happy about a lot of the Bush administration social policies. They cut against many things I believe are important for us as a democracy. But you know - he's right about the war on terror IMO. Now, you can dismiss that as my ignorance. Obviously I am misled, and obviously this is the result of the Nanny Press failing in its job of telling me how to think correctly. [sarcasm intended] It never occurs to you that I and others who basically support Bush's diagnosis of the threats facing our country, and western civilization, might be thoughtful analysts who have well-founded reasons for that conclusion. Of *course* I made a naive mistake in coming to that conclusion. I should have realized that my decades of experience, some of it doing business in the Middle East and Asia, and years of both cultural and policy study were an inadequate base for such important decisions. Clearly, where I went wrong was in not taking a journalism degree instead, preferably from the appropriate folk at Columbia Univ. or their ilk. Pfah. Posted by: rkb at April 25, 2004 3:41 PM | Permalink
He demonstrated that: 1. He has the determination and courage to see the fight against terrorism to the end. 2. He and Americans are on one side of the fence and the media and terrorists are on the other side. Posted by: Jake at April 25, 2004 3:56 PM | Permalink Grant D. - "To me, the fundamental issue is why they believe such things. Is it because they're not sophisticated enough to distinguish between Saddam and Osama? Or is it because the press uncritically passed along the adminisitration's case for invading Iraq, which was conflated with the al Qaeda threat?" Perhaps it is that some Americans do not share your context and are therefore able to orient themselves differently than you. For example, do Americans equate the war on terrorism with a war on al Qaeda in the same way that you do? Is one a subset of the other? Do Americans color their context with Iraq's terrorism and support of Palestinian terrorists? Do Americans understand, they same way you do, that Saddam's Iraq was isolated from, or minimally involved with, al Qaeda activities? Do they deconflict al Qaeda, Ansar Islam, and Saddam pre-war, with the resources and dedication of Zarqawi and Islamic extremist fighting in Iraq this past year? Have many Americans been oriented, or conditioned, over the last decade with reports of complicity between Iraq and bin Laden in "Sudan's aspirin factory", first WTC bombing, 1998 indictment of bin Laden including an Iraq/al Qaeda arrangement, bin Laden's 1999 disappearance with Iraq as a possible destination, ...? I have four complaints about "the press" today: 1. They are not honest with their consumers, and perhaps themselves, about the process of "observe, orient, decide, act". 2. They are not honest with their consumers, or perhaps just unaware, that their medium consists of a channel, passive filters and active filters. 3. They are not the "first cut at history" but the first draft of the next paragraph added to a continuous story with a timeline. 4. They jealously defend a tyrannical hierarchy of information sources while denying their own corporate special interests. Is it possible that Bush can successfully challenge the press myth of a 4th estate because they have lost their own credibility with the public? Has that credibility been lost over time because the public feels they are not well served through gotcha journalism? Has that credibility been lost over time as journalistic scandals and biases are revealed? Has that credibility been lost over time as "the press" denies they are biased and downplays their scandals? What I think is more relevant and important today is "the press" role of "useful fools" during a guerilla based war. Are their consumers confident they are not being propagandized by one side or the other? Posted by: Tim at April 25, 2004 4:07 PM | Permalink To use Jay's terminology, big media has been knocked off balance by, among other things, the Internet. The Internet isn't limited by the economy of the printed and broadcast worlds - with both newspapers and television, there is a finite amount of time/space in which to present facts, analysis and editorial views. By their nature, it's a one-to-one relationship (writer/editor-to-reader in the print world) or a one-to-many (reporter/newsreader to a mass but fragmenting audience in the broadcast). The Internet is, of course, many-to-many, with relatively few mediating factors like startup costs, circulation, advertising, etc. And I believe big media necessarily must engage in the kind of yes-no/for-against/winner-loser types of analysis. They simply don't have time, space, or money to do much beyond that. Having known a lot of journalists and worked in the field, I can say with some authority that many of its works have the same limitations that other professions have. Most journalists, for example, don't have anything beyond rudimentary math, science, business, or critical-thinking skills. This serves to limit the discourse even further. So we get these discussions limted to "Either Americans are stupid or Bush hypnotized us". There's rarely any sense that maybe the assumptions are incorrect, or that things might change in the future, or that maybe they collectively overlooked something (e.g., the Oil-for-Graft program at the UN). Average citizens and business workers are treated with suspicion; other journalists, foreigners, and bureaucrats are given every benefit of the doubt. It's a weird mix of cynicism and naivete. Here's a meme that gets repeated frequently: Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. I see this reported in the press a lot. What I think has happened is that at some point, the press made a decision: Al Qaeda=terrorism. Never mind that terrorism isn't limited to Al Qaeda. Never mind that Saddam had proven links to Palestinian terrorists. Never mind that just because no hard and fast links have been established between Saddam and Al Qaeda - a (by design) splintered, cell-based network - doesn't preclude them from being found. Never mind that there are infinite numbers of ways that someone with a lot of money can influence and support groups of a like mind (see also: George Soros, Richard Mellon Scaife). Et cetera. No - the media, which never misses a chance to blast Republicans (or Americans, for that matter) for their black-and-white view of the world, can't seem to get beyond an apparently dogmatic view of the incredibly fluid and shadowy world of Middle East intrigue. The statement is, flatly: We attacked Iraq even though Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Now, I look at that and wonder: Who's being reductive here? Who's seeing the world in black-and-white? Who is ruling out any possibility of connections or nuance here? Hint: It's not George Bush. For me, it's not a matter of bias as it is a matter of shallowness. The press claims for itself a gigantic role in the public life of this country. They show increasingly little as a justification for that role. Since they aren't elected, and aren't even appointed (except by themselves), the only way that messages can be delivered to the media is via ratings and circulation numbers. But even then, in its collective narcissism, it judges that the problem isn't in the media, but with instead stupid, unthinking, unreflective, venal Americans. Posted by: Steve in Houston at April 25, 2004 4:55 PM | Permalink Hello, all. Some clarifications: When Bush says to journalists "you don't represent the public," it means a bit more than reporters are unrepresentative, or their views unlike the views of most Americans. I believe Bush is challenging the very notion that journalism is conducted in the public interest, that the public's right to know depends on the press finding things out. That's quite different from "journalists are liberal, Americans on the whole are moderate to conservative," which is not the point the President is making-- even though he probably agrees with that too. Second: my essay tries to summarize and capture what Bush and company are thinking. But I have noticed in the Blogosphere that readers often assume I share the reasoning I am only trying to paraphrase. I think the Bush Thesis is important, a serious argument, and it ought to be taken seriously. That does not mean I agree with it. Thom: Check the link to the Boston Globe and you will find that I did not leave out the direct feed to local stations. And if you click here you will find a post on "the Administration's practice of actively reaching out to smaller, local reporters and stations while simulatenously stiffing the majors." I wrote a comment pointing out that that the http://centristcoalition.com/blog/archives/000723.html Posted by: Jon Kay at April 25, 2004 5:04 PM | Permalink Great analysis of our President's dead-on perception of the role of "lamestream" media today, glad I read this. And the thread here has been excellent as well, some very good points. I'm not going to pile onto Grant since that's been covered here. But his comments reallly do illustrate the prevailing attitude among those who, for whatever reason, simply do not get it. I'd bet if you asked Grant and his friends if they think the US is actually at war, they'd either hedge about it, or flat-out deny that we are. And that, to me, is the main reason behind why someone like Grant can make statements like that. It's not truly real to them for some reason, almost as if the videos of the planes smashing into the WTC were computer graphics-generated "clips" from some hollywood special effects house! When Bush says to journalists "you don't represent the public," it means a bit more than reporters are unrepresentative, or their views unlike the views of most Americans. I believe Bush is challenging the very notion that journalism is conducted in the public interest, that the public's right to know depends on the press finding things out. Jay, I agree. That is the challenge Bush has made. And that challenge resonates deeply for me. I consider myself an thoughtful citizen and voter. I take questions about public policy seriously and try to bring both an open mind and my own life experience (plus a few graduate degrees) to bear when deciding what policies to support or advocate for, and who will get my vote. However, increasingly since the 1970s, journalists and the wider "press" community - most explicitly to include faculty in journalism schools - have arrogated to themselves the role of speaking for me. I object to that arrogation on principle. And when as sometimes happens the press community's attitudes do not reflect my own - as has happened often with regard to the war on terror and especially to the question of Iraq - I am deeply angry at the arrogance the press shows. Moreover, when the press speaks about subjects in which I have some professional expertise (business, cross-cultural and religious issues, some aspects of the military) I often find an appalling lack of basic knowledge, an indifference to relevant facts and - yes - a pervasive worldview that mitigates against an objective view of the situation. Is it any surprise, then, that the press has little credibility with many adults in this country? It's bad enough that they have the arrogance to assume they speak for me, or that they have a central advocacy role in public policy making. It's even worse when they do so based on ignorance, laziness and/or a worldview which goes unquestioned and uninformed.
Posted by: rkb at April 25, 2004 5:26 PM | Permalink The embedded reporters were the antidote to the "Sunday Morning" quarterbacks in the TV studios. While they spoke of endless problems, troop shortages, miscalculations and a burgeoning quagmire, the embedded reporters showed an army advancing hundreds of miles in just a couple of weeks. At that point, American TV viewers saw just how biased the media "elite" is. Yhey had been passionate advocates against the war and now they were doing everything in their power to make their opposition appear correct. No surprise then that news viewership dropped off and stayed off. The journalism wing of the entertainment industry had been outflanked. The nightly newscast was their Maginot Line and live battlefield coverage was the mobility that obsoleted it. Posted by: Paul at April 25, 2004 5:29 PM | Permalink War reporting began in the American Civil War, and the first thing that military commanders both in the field and in the capitals realized was that the press was in effect a source of intelligence for each side against the other. Lee had a staff member regularly troll for Union newspapers; first McClellan, then Stanton (Sec'y of War), and later on Halleck, Union "General in Chief" before Grant, began to clamp down on reporting. My favorite as always because he was by far the greatest intellect among the general officers on both sides, Wm. Tecumseh Sherman said roundly that reporters were in effect spies and if found in the wrong place at the wrong time should be shot at spies. What it came down to for Sherman was that newspapers were sources for the enemy, which they are. Secondly, they were, perhaps paradoxically, ignorant sources, i.e., they understood nothing of military matters, and therefore had no idea of how to understand the events they were witnesses. Remember how macho Rumsfeld was with smart-alack reporters at the beginning of the Afghanistan war, trying to educate a bunch of non-starters who didn't want to be educated? ("How may babies did you kill today, Mr. Rumsfeld?" Why does Bush think reporters are assholes? Give me a break.) He for a while in effect had his own show, with half the middle-aged women in the U. S. swooning over him and his "Oh, Dear me's, did that happen?" etc. The toll taken by the gender revolution which has trashed male martial virtue has led to a defacto massive hole in the journalist profession's knowledge of military history and of military matters in general. They simply had no idea in the the whole wide world how to understand the opening moves in either Afghanistan or Iraq, moves that will be studied with amazement in war colleges round the world. I wouldn't shoot 'em as Sherman would: I'd put them on the oldfashioned donkey facing the wrong way, tar, feather them and ride them out of town. Bush put stake in American journalism's heart with the statements you cite in your article. I suspect that you've tried to make the statements as gentle as possible in order to try to conceal that fact. What he's said in effect--the results of the election will confirm or not--is that he doesn't need the liberal media to make his case to the voters, because the media has already in effect done that for him by being a bunch of contemptible posturers whenever they write negative articles about him. If I were those people, I'd quit while I was ahead and go try farming in Idaho. Posted by: Michael McCanles at April 25, 2004 5:31 PM | Permalink One other quick thing- Steve from Houston points out something about the disconnect between Saddam & Al-Q in his comments. I've always wondered about this and why the media never looked at it this way: Sorry, clicked Post rather than Preview. To finish my thought re: public interest and the public's right to know: The press, in my opinion, has come perilously close to losing basic credibility as a source of information. The press has identified its own actions and opinions with the public interest, with a demonstrable failure IMO to bring either disinterested analysis or knowledgeable insight into many of its products. As a result, "the press" has forfeited respect as a suitable channel for the public's right to know. I am very concerned about what will replace the major media in performing the important role of uncovering and disseminating information about our government -- a critical function in a healthy democracy. To a fair degree, the availability of source documents and data regarding government actions make it possible for citizens and commentators to draw their own conclusions, without the mediation of the professional press community. Perhaps journalism as a profession will reform itself and will provide "value added" analysis and collating of facts. We'll see. Posted by: rkb at April 25, 2004 5:38 PM | Permalink "why did the Bush team feel comfortable placing hundreds of "special pleaders" with the tanks and troops invading Iraq?" Precisely because the Bush team DOES have some faith in reporters who can describe events in context. Embedding some reporters for a significant period of continuous time with active military units was hoped to produce some stories with facts embedded in them. Stories written by members of a private club who briefly leave the cloistered premises to snap a photo or interview an individual will still be imprinted with the groupthink of that club, which also imprints almost all of mainstream editorial comment. Barely any journalists have actively served in the military, and few would have any understanding of operations at the unit level without the embedment process. Hence that process was a public service of the highest order by the Government - which is obviously aware that the public is not going to get the whole story from the media as currently biased, but would get more of it with embeds than without. Bias by selective omissions at the editorial level, it goes without saying, has remained alive and kicking. Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at April 25, 2004 5:41 PM | Permalink When Clinton began in office, I was often irritated by the media. Of course, it was liberal (and I was - or at least a good deal less conservative than I am today). The focus of discussions on show after show was on polls, on appearance. The network news does not appear to consider a person's expertise as important - political reporters cover Clinton's health plan, Bush's statements on Iraq, privatization of social security. They may ask an expert, but the political reporter gives context, chooses an expert (generally that agrees with their political reporting), and edits their remarks. When Don Gagny (sp? The npr reporter) asked if Bush didn't feel he had failed as a communicator, the next day on npr was spent talking about his "moment in the sun," the tie he was wearing and whether his mother had seen him. Nothing was said about the stupidity of that question. I have yet, for instance, to see any major outlet discuss points Bush has brought up that they don't want to discuss. They constantly confuse Niger with Africa, assuming the mention of Africa must mean Niger. I haven't heard any of them discuss the challenge Bush issued to the UN to do something about slavery. This is true of Fox as well. It is true that Fox doesn't deliver a steady stream of insults to Republicans in fly-over country, but they also don't often delve as deeply as they should. My main sources are Fox and NPR through the accidents of car-pooling and commuting. We are left with one source that assumes we are all interested in every detail of the latest celebrity trial and the other that doesn't even acknowledge that listeners might have another set of values than the ones they push. Of course, Fox is more honest. Britt Hume with some grace and Hannity & O'Reilly with a good deal less grace are at least willing to acknowledge that some people look at the world from a different angle than they. They are just sure they are right. That may irritate listeners who are less sure (and even ones like me that occasionally wince, thinking they are right but hate to impress the messenger), but it is a good deal more honest. No, the media doesn't represent us. And the questions at that last press conference made a George Bush who was occasionally bumbling the hero. Given the choice between psychobabble cynicism and not always articulate dedication, we are likely to choose the latter--unless we consider narcisstic cynicism a virtue. Posted by: Ginny at April 25, 2004 5:45 PM | Permalink The big problem with the press is that there is, to such a great extent The Press these days, an editorial and corporate monolith that speaks, if not with a single voice, then certainly a uniform one. Here in Los Angeles we are down to two daily English-language newspapers, the Times and the Daily News. Editorially, they are largely indistinguishable on all but the most local issues. In how many cities is this the case? How many cities support a press that is truly diverse in politcial and editorial thought? Most major cities are reduced to one or two major dailies and that's it. Matters are complicated now by the new rulings permitting newspaper owners to also own television and radio stations. Again, here in LA, for example, Tribune, the company that owns KTLA now also owns the LA Times, and the editorial slant of station and paper are merging seamlessly and shamelessly, resulting in some markedly slanted "news coverage " on KTLA. It is becoming less and possible for people of wide range of opinion and political preference to find "mainstream: journalism that represents them and reflects -- or even recognizes-- their own experiences. This is not a whinge of the Republican right, but of Americans from a broad spectrum of views and The Press as shaped cannot address this problem. Posted by: Richard McEnroe at April 25, 2004 5:48 PM | Permalink It is interesting that Mr. Rosen felt compelled to come back and post this: "I believe Bush is challenging the very notion that journalism is conducted in the public interest, that the public's right to know depends on the press finding things out. That's quite different from "journalists are liberal, Americans on the whole are moderate to conservative," which is not the point the President is making-- even though he probably agrees with that too." So Mr. Rosen is trying to say that Bush probably hates a free press in general? I don't think there is evidence of that kind of attitude. So why would Mr. Rosen say this? Does he want to protect himself from the "mafia" of his fellow journalists? Why would Mr. Rosen defend himself and his colleagues so weakly and then go away? Come back. We know that Bush isn't against a free press in general. Just the current Columbia School class. So let us discuss that sir...with you directly and not just via comments to your original post. Is there something going on within the media that would make you a black sheep if you just came right out and admitted that there is an attitude problem in too many reporters these days (and since the Tet Offensive)? Now a big question I have is this: if corporations own the media...why can't there be a top-down policy of firing the biased leftists outright? Why are people "buying" the liberal media so much still? Why is there money in talking treason? Why did the media just fire Peter Arnett? Posted by: Jennifer Peterson at April 25, 2004 6:52 PM | Permalink To further clarify in light of Rosen's "clarification" that we are all commenting "on target" to his original post...the accusation that President Bush might be saying that a free press shouldn't play a role in uncovering information...is instantly rendered false by the idea that the President might feel that there are plenty of things good reporters can do in this war in terms of uncovering information. They could be working hard to investigate what www.Debka.com says, for instance. They could say "The Israeli website, Debka.com, announced today that Talibani will be the first president of Iraq - we sent a team to uncover this rumor"...or "The Israeli website, Debka.com, rumored to be an arm of Mossad "disinformation", announced today that the Iranian government helped launch the attacks on the Basra oil rigs yesterday from Iranian soil! - We have a team of reporters on this. - Update at 11!" Now I would admit that the President probably PREFERS that journalists in this war just waste their time on meaningless leftist drivel about whether Iraq needed to be invaded in the first place...then to try to report on what is actually going on in the war on terror. If you've ever read the book "Bodyguard of Lies"...the trick in war is to keep the media off guard and off topic. You want eyes to be looking in one direction while you do something major in another direction. Imagine if, before the Normandy invasion, the media was carping about why we were so "arrogant" as to try to stop Europe from being Nazi and democratize everybody when they obviously all wanted to be Nazi...and furthermore shouldn't be required to follow our way of life by force. Maybe fewer German soldiers, having believed that Americans didn't have the stomach to invade Europe, would have been on guard on the bluffs over Omaha Beach that day. But then Jay Rosen would have to admit that the media is really just filling a function right now of *supporting* the war effort by pretending that Woodward-style investigation of presidential "blunders" is where our Arab enemies should be looking...that, correctly surmising that undercutting the President's credibility in the world at a time of war couldn't possibly be a seriously patriotic thing to do, the corporate media bigwigs have set their incompetent nabobs out on "wild goose chases" that will make the media look like it is "free" and "critical" but in effect render the media harmless in terms of pointing out to the enemy what might be dangerous to that enemy. Another point: We blog posters are more dangerous to national security than the regular media. We can actually come up with concepts about American plans and, for instance, the true meaning of Negroponte's new ambassadorship...and the enemy can see what is going on. Let us face it: the current nonsense we see in newspapers and television might be motivational to the enemy...but it doesn't tell them what is going to happen to them...and they will be caught mostly off guard when they get what they deserve (Iranian revolution, Iraqi Phoenix Program, etc).
Posted by: Jennifer Peterson at April 25, 2004 7:14 PM | Permalink Let me flesh this out a bit more...let us surmise that the White House is in daily contact with the owners of big media including Ted Turner. Everybody has agreed to an agenda of Bush until 2008 and maybe Hillary after that. Now let us suppose that the main order of the day is as such: "Keep all eyes off of Iran right now" meaning that we have black ops underway in Iran and we want the world to ignore this. Orders from the top down in the news organizations will be for the "cub reporters" to carp on the decision to go into Iraq more than a year ago...effectively driving home the idea across the world that America couldn't possibly be actively overthrowing more regimes as we speak...the Americans are too busy wringing their hands and "apologizing" to everybody about Iraq. Thus, without even knowing it, the media hacks are the poodles (the bitches) of their owners...dutifully "apologizing" to our enemies in the fictional world of entertainment news while the enemies get shafted in real life. And the world will see a liberated Iran and wonder how that all happened "behind their backs." When the media was constantly attacking Reagan...did they pinpoint the actual black ops that put the Soviet Union out of business? No. They were mainly complicit in scaring the Soviets about "Star Wars." Our media carped so much about how "Star Wars" would start a new arms race that the Soviets actually bought that line, started a new arms race and quickly went bankrupt. In other words, Republican politicians (possibly with the help of the media's corporate owners) perform jujitsu on their own media and, by extension, on the American enemies who start to rely on and believe the American media. [With jujitsu, you let the enemy throw itself to the floor by its own power.] Posted by: Jennifer Peterson at April 25, 2004 7:27 PM | Permalink Al Jazeera, for instance, is being allowed to pursue a certain line of anti-American reasoning at the moment...because an Iranian Revolution will show the Arab people how bankrupt the line of reasoning really is. Al Jazeera is going to have its "Tet Moment" soon when their version of Walter Cronkite finally says that "democracy cannot be stopped - who were we kidding". Posted by: Jennifer Peterson at April 25, 2004 7:32 PM | Permalink Jennifer writes: So Mr. Rosen is trying to say that Bush probably hates a free press in general? I don't think there is evidence of that kind of attitude. So why would Mr. Rosen say this? Does he want to protect himself from the "mafia" of his fellow journalists? I think there's a lot of contempt for a free press in the Bush Administration. Whether Bush himself "hates a free press in general" I cannot say. But I was writing about his ideas, not emotions like hate. I said those ideas should be taken seriously. And his big idea, developed as well by his advisors--what I called the Bush thesis--proposes that the national press is not a part of the system of checks and balances in government, does not represent the public, and is little more than a special pleader. These are new notions for an occupant of the White House, and they go well beyond the normal frustration presidents have shown toward the press. The group in question--members of the national press--are not my colleagues, Jennifer, although I respect many of them and know a few. I have never been a working reporter. I'm a press critic and scholar of journalism (with a PhD), and I have often stood for ideas that are harshly rejected by elite journalism. (Check into the public journalism debate from the 1990s if you wish to know more.) As for admitting the press has an "attitude problem," just browse the archives at PressThink for all the problems I see in journalism today. Someone said in these postings that 'If the press is the fourth estate, then who watches over the press?' Secondly, I would like to Second the comments of Glenn Reynolds. There's a reason why Instapundit.com is so sucessful: it's run by a pretty smart guy.... But back to his comment: the Press itself is NOT a check on government, it is the Power of the Press: the right to free speech, publication, etc., that is the check on power. That power is derived from the first amendment (and for those of you who studied history, a court case involving a newspaper and the colonial government in pre-revolution America). It isn't the body of editors, chief's, CEO's, Reporters, journalists, and commentators (and in some light, the gobs of cash they have) that give the press the right to free speech and the right to know: it's the constitution and the rights afforded to you by the constitution (and in the view of some, by God). When people ABUSE rights, however, they are lost by some way or another. In this case, the discrediting of the old media by the President and long before the people (and bloggers). There is no stopping this: by nature of the law and the democratic society we live in it occurs. Someone in the press forgot this a long time ago, and they blew it but didn't know it. Now the truth has come out, and they've been hit pretty hard. Posted by: Charles Hammond Jr. at April 25, 2004 8:22 PM | Permalink ...ditto what rkb said. I'm not one of the lumpen public the press is preaching to. I have a master's in film theory and know when I'm being manipulated, whether i |
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