PressThink: Three Questions for Kevin Drum

Three Questions for Kevin Drum

(Number One: Is the press, properly understood, a political animal?) "It's not clear to me what big news organizations would do if they took Drum's advice seriously and started 'fighting back.'" Plus: Matt Taibbi hits a triple.

My winner for best piece of criticism about Newsweek’s recent ordeal is Matt Taibbi in the New York Press this week (May 25-31). We, Anonymous it’s called. He’s cynical about the whole deal:

It was humorous to see how quickly Newsweek lost its cachet with Middle America. So long as it went about its usual revolting Neanderthal literary mission—wrapping 4000 words of inane speculations about the historical Jesus around breathless updates on the value of Martha Stewart stock (Pie Chart, p. 37!), and startling new insights about “the real George Washington”—no one had any problem with Newsweek.
An ethical magazine is one that uses up its news pages asking questions like Can smiling prevent cancer? and makes sure at least twice each calendar year to do a “What the fuck is wrong with our ungrateful, disobedient children?” story, so that angry suburban parents have something to read in the doctor’s office while they wait to have their bunions shaved. That—plus the occasional feature on Shrek 2 as the crowning achievement of the human creative impulse, and the odd investigation into why cell phones in restaurants are so darn annoying—is what good journalism is all about.

The real crime is not bias or secret sources. It’s fluff. It’s pseudo-sophistication. It’s a lost sense of what good journalism is all about. The real problem with investigative reporting is that it so rarely happens. The solvent for ethics in journalism is entertainment. These are Matt’s points. But his main point is that no one is troubled by confidential sources when they’re used to puff up.

Taibbi brings up a “slobbering cover profile” by Richard Wolffe in the New Republic, purporting to be about “the Bush you don’t know.” The public person you don’t (really) know is a news magazine genre piece. Whether it’s the Howard Dean or the Diane Sawyer you don’t know, the genre’s requirements are the same: two or three stereotypes are reversed in the course of the reporting, so that the author can claim to have discovered something new and surprising, which we didn’t get from all the prior profiles.

Of course the reason people said Bill Clinton was chronically late was that he was chronically late, and that is the situation with most public figures. It’s harder than you might think to pull off the “Bill Gates you don’t know” piece. But not if you have confidential sources! They make quick work of those old stereotypes. Taibbi gives this example from Wolffe:

When he wants to be, he’s a real stickler for details,” says one Republican senator. “When he calls you to talk about a bill, he knows the nitty-gritty. You don’t get the sense he’s been reading the Cliffs Notes guide to an issue.”

Think: Why does a Republican senator have to go off the record to praise his party’s president? Put yourself in the senator’s place. What kind of journalist grants you anonymity because you took the risk and said nice things about your boss?

Now here’s a corrupt and cynical practice, Matt Taibbi says. The illogic of it is not even concealed. But since the corrupt use of nameless sources for “he knows the nitty-gritty” does not involve criticism of people with power, the scandal machine is silent on it.

So you think Newsweek didn’t work hard enough to confirm the Quran-toilet story? How hard do you think Richard Wolffe worked to confirm that George Bush “knows the nitty-gritty”? I bet he burned up the phone lines working on that one.
They just throw this stuff out there week after week, and no one ever complains about it. That’s because kissing ass is not a crime in America, while questioning the government often is. At least, you better not screw it up if you try. God help you then.

Taibbi’s aims are satiric, so he doesn’t say what ought to be done about the situation. Kevin Drum, who is just as derisive, (“a small error in a 300-word blurb”) does say.

“Newsweek and the rest of the media need to get up off their knees and start fighting back,” he wrote at WashingtonMonthly.com on May 23. This was the day Newsweek’s Editor-in-Chief published a contrite note to readers. “They’ve done enough apologizing,” Drum said.

Taibbi and Drum are both angry. But where Matt turns to farce Kevin sees a nightmare. “This is like watching Darkness at Noon in real life.”

Start fighting back were the words that stopped me. It does seem like a time for that. But how is the fighting done? Surely one of the problems is that the press can be warred upon as the Liberal Media, but without a change in its professional code it cannot war back or declare itself “ready to fight.” And there’s the risk of being dragged further into the warring, which to many journalists means bye-bye journalism.

It’s not clear to me what big news organizations would do if they took Drum’s advice seriously and started “fighting back.” He didn’t give any examples. Is it like this? Or more like that? Maybe this is what Drum had in mind. Or possibly that. Or even this. How about… And then there’s… Here’s one more.

The background to Drum’s exasperated call to journalists is this warning to his readers, May 18th: “Liberals should think very hard before joining the media bashing crusade too eagerly.”

Endless broad brush howling does nothing except enable the right wing’s agenda, regardless of what the howling is aimed at. If liberal bloggers were wiser, we’d spend a little more time praising our big national newspapers and a little less time shaking our fists over the fact that sometimes they aren’t on our side. Our real opposition is the right wing press destruction machine, not the press itself.
Because if big newspapers die, that’s pretty much the end of real daily reporting in this country. That would suit the right just fine, I think, but not so much the left. We shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves that constant carping — frequently over trivial transgressions — somehow makes the press stronger. It doesn’t.

I would love to know what Kevin Drum, an articulate and informed liberal—and of course a Political Animal—thinks about the identity questions at the big newspapers that he says do the daily reporting. Let’s call them “the press” for now so we can ask him these questions:

Is the press, properly understood, a political animal?

If so, what kind of politics should it have?

How do we know if the press has got the politics part right?

I offer these puzzlers to Kevin Drum, but I am as interested in what Hugh Hewett and Glenn Reynolds and Atrios (“Now would be a good time for reporters to push back”) plus others on the left, right or just out in the savannah have to say. And Matt Taibbi too.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

“I don’t usually blog on request, but this is interesting.” Glenn Reynolds responds at Instapundit (and he clearly understands what I was asking):

I think that the press is unavoidably political. What has bothered people (and what gets Kevin heated up about “the right wing press destruction machine”) is that until recently the politics were pretty uniformly left-leaning, to the point that the press became a well-defined political player on its own. Not for nothing does Howard Feinman write about the “Media Party.” Now that’s changing (this is the part that has Kevin heated up) and things that used to go unchallenged and unremarked are now challenged and remarked upon.
What kind of politics should it have? Non-monolithic, and transparent. If, as First Amendment theory suggests, the marketplace of ideas is a check on the political power of an unelected press, then we need diversity of perspective and a willingness of press organs to criticize each others’ reporting.

How do we know when the press has it right? When we’ve got news organs representing a diversity of perspectives. We’re making progress in that direction, but we’re a long way from getting there.

Thanks, Glenn. Most informative.

Michelle Cottle, senior editor of The New Republic, May 20:

The broader problem here is that, on some level, many journalists lack the instinct to fight for themselves. By nature, we are a hypercritical bunch, eternally nitpicking and dwelling on the negative side of humanity. (Remember: No news is good news.) But despite our collective reputation for arrogance, journalists’ harsh nature absolutely extends to endless, obsessive dissection of our own industry and work, to a degree that risks becoming self-destructive….
My suspicion is that journalists somehow believe that our high-mindedness, our self-restraint, our willingness to take all this abuse—even to dish it out—somehow will win us credibility in the eyes of the public. Most journalists, after all, like to believe that all we want from the people we cover is honesty and openness and an eagerness to admit their every sin. Shouldn’t the public then love us for our willingness to do the same?

Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, Patrick Buchanan is thinking prosecute ‘em, there’s precedent over at the Human Events site. See More Nihilism at Newsweek. The likely charge: sedition.

If Newsweek’s editors sensed this was an explosive item and printed it anyway, they may fairly be charged with sabotaging U.S. war policy and compromising the cause for which American soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Only a few have urged that Newsweek’s editors be brought up on sedition charges. But what Newsweek did is worse than the antiwar activity for which labor leader Eugene Debs was given 10 years in prison during World War I.

Previously at PressThink:

Newsweek’s Take-Our-Word-For-It World (May 17)

Trust-Me Journalism and the Newsweek Retraction (May 22)

The Abyss of Observation Alone (March 1)

The questions I asked Kevin Drum and others (Have a blog? Write a column? Then I asked you…) grow out of these lines in Psst…. The Press is a Player (My essay at TomPaine.com, Jan. 22, 2003.)

It’s an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years… the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no clear instructions in what the press could or should be playing for. So while the press likes being a player, it does not like being asked: what are you for?
In fact, the instructions are not to think about it too much, because to know what you are playing for would be to have a kind of agenda. And by all mainstream definition the political reporter must have no kind of agenda. The Washington Post, National Public Radio, CNN, Newsweek, the Des Moines Register, and all similar competitors, are officially (and rhetorically) committed to “no agenda” journalism, also known as the view from nowhere. So while it might be recognized that the press is a player, journalists also see an unsolvable problem if they take one more intellectual step. So they dare not.

Blogger John Cole of Balloon Juice (ex-military and a supporter of the war in Iraq) writes Doing More Damage Than Good, a warning to his own side, picking up on this post from Hugh Hewitt:

Everyone repeat after me:
Reporting on abuses that have been committed by our troops, in our name, is not anti-military. While I am not arrogant enough to attempt to divine the motives of every journalist who reports on such abuses, Hugh appears to be up to the challenge. I find his attack on the reporting of the outrageous abuses detailed at length in the NY Times to be both disturbing and disingenuous.

Apparently in the myopic worldview of Mr. Hewitt, reading and reporting the just-released documents the Army itself created is both ‘anti-military’ and ‘re-hashing’ an old story. Let’s not focus on the fact that few, if any, have been punished for these transgressions. Let’s not focus on credible reports that these incidents continue to occur. Instead, if Hewitt is to have his way, we should all focus on the ‘anti-military’ stance of the media.

What is particularly disturbing is how he and others have artificially conflated the Newsweek error and the NY Times story. This is no accident, but an act of intentional and outright propaganda.

And see Dean Esmay’s reply, which occasioned this from Cole: “I am really beginning to think many of you guys out there don’t want an independent media- you want a damned public relations firm.” Bingo.

More on the backlash… See this accusing Cole of defecting from the conservative side, and Cole’s answer: A Response to Rick.

Ernest Miller at Corante answers my questions:

Is journalism a political animal? “Of course it is. How could it not be? That is sort of one of the main points of the First Amendment, is it not? When one reports on political issues, it is inevitable that the reporting will become part of the political cycle.”

If so, what kind of politics should it have? “Almost any damn kind it pleases. Journalism isn’t a single monolithic institution. It is a cacophony of voices.”

How do we know if journalism has got the politics part right? “We can’t.”

Military and media blogger Tim Schmoyer (Sisyphus) also has replies:

Is the press a political animal? Yes, but it is not a party animal.

If so, what kind of politics should it have? “Transparent ones. We do not want a monolithic press.”

How do we know if the press has got the politics part right? “Press politics currently is the commodification of eyeballs and ears. When press politics becomes the commodification of thought and speech by the public, then they’ll have their politics right.”

Read his post.

“Write on, Brother Jay! Write on!” That’s Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler. He didn’t care at all for my appreciation of Daniel Okrent, and he wants specifically to know why I thought his public editor column calling the New York Times a “liberal newspaper” was a good thing. (I said it would prove liberating.) “We think this is no ‘liberation’ at all—and we hope that Jay will splain different,” says Somerby.

I’ll work on it.

Posted by Jay Rosen at May 26, 2005 1:13 AM Print

I'll take Glenn Reynolds seriously when he reams the press for not pursuing reliable, undisputed (to this point, anyway) and now quite publicly sourced allegations that the Bush administration lied unendingly about the evidence for the Iraq invasion and falsely described the invasion as a potential "last resort" for months, perhaps years, after they'd made up their minds to go to war. I'd say that was considerably more deadly, and more damaging to our national credibility, than the Newsweek fiasco, to which Reynolds devoted at least a dozen posts.

(I'd like to see him go after Terry Moran's completely unsourced allegations about an anti-military bias among the press, too, but that's a minor quibble.)

This is a bit of a sidetrack and I've written about it ad nauseum, but when two of the most senior officials of our closest ally say that the invasion of Iraq was based upon multiple lies, and not one goddamned soul in the White House briefing room other than my unpaid, part-time correspondent even bothers to ask about it, you cannot ascribe a liberal bias to the press.

The press have always been conservative in the sense of not wanting to swim against the prevailing tide. That tide was mostly liberal from Roosevelt through Reagan — and no, I'm not forgetting Nixon, but he was an aberration and got treated like one; would have been worse absent Kissinger — but as liberals were replaced by conservatives and reporters started drinking more with the conservatives than the liberals, the tide turned. Now the conservative impulse is toward conservative politics, and anyone who has lived through the past 15 years or so and doesn't see that is, frankly, either a moron or so blinded by ideology as to be functionally so.

That's the sense in which the press are political: it's social politics. If liberals ever again take control of government for an extended period, you'll start to see a politically liberal press, assuming there still is a press — and I'm speaking here of the national press — about ten years in because that's how long it'll take for liberals to replace conservatives as the best drinking buddies and the people whose names go on the second batch of party invitations.

The press'll take up a crusade now and again, and they'll go after a seriously wounded politician no matter what his affiliation, but they won't buck the tide.

So, yes, properly understood the press are political animals, both in the social sense and in having a self-aware influence on the political process.

Should they be political? Not in the social sense, but with respect to their influence on our political discourse, the press would be absolutely meaningless absent it. As it is, they're moving about in the aimless, depressed phase that comes just before absolute meaninglessness. Their politics should be the politics of the rhinocerous in the china shop. He's not biased, he just happens to break shit when he pokes around.

You'll know if the press has got its politics right when bodies start piling up, when policies are reported on for what they mean and do rather than on what two or three opposing factions say about them, when the press realize that writing to a fifth-grade level, or whatever the standard is now, doesn't mean the paper is being read by fifth graders, when the press don't cower before any bunch of wackos who happen to attract enough followers to make noise — ooh, diversity, we don't have enough frickin' Young Earth Creationists in the newsroom; how can we cover them fairly? — and when they remember that events don't happen in a vacuum. Hey! Yo! Over here! Context! History!

And when they quit using phrases like "without fear or favor" unless they mean it.

And I'm not even going to address the successful, forty-year effort, by what started out as Goldwater Republicans, to undo the forty years of influence social liberals had had more or less uninterrupted.

My question to Kevin Drum: Fight back? With what? Their record of competence?

Posted by: weldon berger at May 27, 2005 11:24 PM | Permalink

The son of the richest media baron in Australia kind of replies to your three questions ;-) Online the way to go - James Packer

via Hugh Martin: We are at the end of the beginning in terms of the internet

Posted by: Jozef Imrich at May 26, 2005 6:40 AM | Permalink

I wrote on this subject a while back at Techcentralstation.
The short version is thatthe press will becomemore biased but with diversity to the bias, as in the UK newspaper market.

Posted by: Tim Worstall at May 26, 2005 10:06 AM | Permalink

I almost find it ironic that you seem to say that Newsweek's reporting of single-source annonymous allegations (that the source has subsequently recanted) represent a return to "what good journalism is all about" in contrast to the reams of otherwise fluff. Perhaps I am too generous, but I believe most discerning consumers of news can separate the chaff of a fluff piece from the wheat of a legitimate hard news article. And in the latter, a higher degree of accuracy and research is rightfully expected.

If you and Newsweek want to redefine "good journalism" as simply throwing out whatever random rumor anyone with a bone to pick wishes to serve up or trumpeting book reports of completed military investigations as "investigative news" (like the NYT did with their recent article on 2002 Afghan prisoner abuse), it only serves to cheapen the trade and further errode public confidence in the value and honesty of the press.

Posted by: submandave at May 26, 2005 10:21 AM | Permalink

* Is the press, properly understood, a political animal?
* If so, what kind of politics should it have?
* How do we know if the press has got the politics part right?

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm going to reiterate the numbers from the most recent Annenberg poll:
While 80% of the 675 reporters and editors surveyed think an explicitly partisan news organ is a bad idea, only 53% of the 1,500 readers surveyed thought so.
Conversey, while only 16% of reporters and editors surveyed approved of the idea of a publication with a distincly partisan tilt, 43% of the public thought it was quite a good idea.
The readers are wayyyy out in front of the journalists on this one; they've crested the hill and are on their way down the other side. they're also way out in front of the most vociferous bias warriors that one runs into here and on other "whither journalism" sites.
Something to chew on ...

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 10:34 AM | Permalink

James Taranto: "the press is not, and should not be, a propaganda organ of the government"

Unfortunately it seems some forget the correlary, that the press should just as well not be a propaganga organ of anti-government organizations. Events like the article written on the Frist demonstration that was written by a participant only serve to reinforce the impression may already have that this correlary is regularly violated.

Posted by: submandave at May 26, 2005 11:11 AM | Permalink

"Newsweek and the rest of the media need to get up off their knees and start fighting back," - Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly.com, May 23, 2005, as quoted by Jay above.
"114 INT EMPEROR'S TOWER - THRONE ROOM
Luke's eyes are full of rage. Vader watches him.
EMPEROR:
Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon! Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete." - Return of the Jedi, 1983 (from shooting script, 2nd draft)

I encourage our liberal media friends to throw off the cloak of claimed non-bias and charge openly into battle. Bereft of that smoke screen, and the cover it provides to a press which promulgates liberal ideas under color of objectivity, I am confident conservative ideas will compete more favorably on the ideological battlefield.

Posted by: Trained Auditor at May 26, 2005 11:28 AM | Permalink

Reporters are supposed to by highly informed on politics, but they have no political opinions? Or that they are so scrupulously even-handed that we cannot detect them? Yeah, right. Why don't they just put their opinions up front so we can apply the appropriate discount factor when evaluating them?

Posted by: Mitch at May 26, 2005 11:35 AM | Permalink

Our local paper Rockford, Illinois did one and a half pages in a six page op-ed section on bloggers in Illinois.

No mention of "Blackfive" a very big mil-politico blogger. No home town bloggers.

And the same old same old. "No fact checkers..... etc. etc. etc.

A lot of it was devoted to Alan Keyes' lesbian daughter (which I covered with links). They noted that blogs were on top of the story (so to speak) but that the "ethical" press declined to cover it. And whachu know. It turned out to be a true story. The sources checked and Maia(sp?) Keyes came out on Valentines Day.

Now this is all came out - not during the election season but well after - February. Standard human interest - Fundamentalist Politician disowns daughter.

Well any way the first you hear of the story in the MSM is in an OPED about blogs.

Now who would you prefer to get your news and gossip from.

BTW after I put up my piece I got confirmation from several readers. My fact checkers were at wirk.

Posted by: M. Simon at May 26, 2005 11:43 AM | Permalink

I'm sympathetic to the "let a thousand schools of thought contend" argument, but it's not that simple.

First, the playing field is not even. Bloggers will never have the same degree of access to good sources that the Washington press corps has. Investigative reporting will become more haphazard, less reliable than it already is, and increasingly focused on spreading FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) about one's real or imagined enemies, be they bloggers or politicians.

Second, to follow on Tim W's point about he inevitability of a partisan, UK-style press, there will never again be anything remotely like an authoritative "paper of record." Journalists will become not so much partisans as product managers pitching a distinct, branded offering consisting of equal parts worldview and attitude. More James Wolcott, less James Reston. More snark. Coverage will be driven be the same kind of elaborate research done by any other product marketing organization, and media companies will strive to brand and differentiate themselves the way car manufacturers do. Fox will be positioned like the opinion-biz version of Hummer/Cadillac, NYTimes as Subaru/Audi, NBC as VW, etc.

Note that in this brave new world, bias is more than a desirable feature; it's the very definition of the product. The key metric of success will be not overall readership or viewership but reader/viewer loyalty, and the most ferociously loyal consumers are of course the ones on the far left and far right. Niche marketing will supplant any effort to be a broad-based "paper of record," and news selection and presentation will be shadowed by efforts to win readers over not by intelligence or fairmindedness but by preaching religion to the faithful.

See Bill Keller's amazingly candid admission in BusinessWeek a couple years back about how he and Pinch and the suits decided to focus on catering to their hardcore, most loyal readers instead of appealing to a broad audience. Hence the new Times' emphasis on "flooding the zone", Krugman and Dowd's screeds, more coverage of gays and much less coverage on complex matters - esp but only overseas reporting of countries like Russia or South Africa - that do not afflict the hated redstaters and give comfort to the blue state metrosexual secular core.

In short, the MSM are morphing into blogs with marketing staffs. At some point the political center may rise up and take its revenge, but in the realm of thought and opinion, there's no question that in the near term this will give much greater influence to voices on the far right and the far left.

Posted by: thibaud at May 26, 2005 12:12 PM | Permalink

Thibaud, you say "Bloggers will never have the same degree of access to good sources that the Washington press corps has. Investigative reporting will become more haphazard, less reliable than it already is, and increasingly focused on spreading FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) about one's real or imagined enemies, be they bloggers or politicians."

I have a number of comments on this. First, the "good sources" you talk about only talk to the press as a means to promote their spin which more often than not is exactly the FUD you are complaining about. Second, these "good sources" are not going away; if the MSM become less useful to them they will quickly adapt and provide their "scoops" to bloggers. Third, these sources are mainly of use to help understand the inside-baseball aspects of politics; this part of the news gets coverage way out of proportion to itsw importance. Fourth, if you want to get good information on the issues themselves, there are lots of open sources which will provide more information than any journalist can digest - just go to AEI for one perspective, Brookings for another; these folks are screaming information to anyone who will listen.

Posted by: Hunter McDaniel at May 26, 2005 12:35 PM | Permalink

I still wonder about the letters Newsweek published in this weeks' issue. It seemed like a significant portion of the letter writers were saying "Even if it was true you shouldn't have published it."

Which is a criticism Newsweek would be happy to have. They would MUCH rather have a debate about whether true reporting has actual consequences than whether thinly-sourced, annoymous reporting has more implications (particularly in politics).

It seemed to me, and this is just my own opinion, by publishing the amount of letters with THAT criticism (don't publish even if true) that Newsweek was trying to paint its critics as yokels. As political unsophisticates who JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND JOURNALISM. Of course some yokel from Iowa with a yellow ribbon magnet on his car would say "never publish anything that 'harms' the military." But Newsweek can hardly be expected to follow that kind of criticism (not if they want to be SERIOUS NEWS). I don't know if this was at all intentional, it was just my impression of the letters they published.

Posted by: catrina at May 26, 2005 12:56 PM | Permalink

Hunter, you make some good points, esp about spin, but I've yet to see bloggers break big stories rather than merely debunk news accounts. My responses to each point:

HM: "First, the "good sources" you talk about only talk to the press as a means to promote their spin which more often than not is exactly the FUD you are complaining about."

True, but sources are essential to good journalism, whoever's doing the reporting. I'll agree that FUD seems to be on the increase, esp coming from master FUDmeisters like the arabists and Bush-haters within State and CIA, but this doesn't let journos off the hook. They still have plenty of good anti-FUD devices. Namely, the requirement to seek corroboration from multiple sources and certain traits one expects from adult professionals such as common sense, maturity, good judgment etc. Not every journo is such an easy mark as Sy Hersh.

HM: "Second, these "good sources" are not going away; if the MSM become less useful to them they will quickly adapt and provide their "scoops" to bloggers."

This is a good thing. More reporting, more reporters, more choice => a better approximation of truth. Again, sources are essential

HM: "Third, these sources are mainly of use to help understand the inside-baseball aspects of politics; this part of the news gets coverage way out of proportion to itsw importance."

Agree with you there. One great benefit of the 24x7 cycle and ubiquity of the internet is that it reduces the market value of the scoop. If I can read it anywhere within seconds, there's little economic value to be gained from getting to press first.

HM: "Fourth, if you want to get good information on the issues themselves, there are lots of open sources which will provide more information than any journalist can digest - just go to AEI for one perspective, Brookings for another; these folks are screaming information to anyone who will listen"

Agree totally. It's a huge waste of time to read semi-literate journalists on, eg, social security when you can go directly to the websites of their quoted sources. Brad DeLong's website is better written and far more insightful and informative on Soc Sec'y than any of the MSM's SocSec'y articles that he skewers so hilariously each day.

But if the internet disintermediates journalists, allowing us to tap the experts directly, then really the only beats left to journalism are opinion and investigative reporting.

If you're right that investigative journalism will never be any better than it is now, it may still be worth saving. But if not, then what do you envisage as journalism's unique contribution? (Not a snarky question - just trying to explore the implications of your argument).

Posted by: thibaud at May 26, 2005 1:03 PM | Permalink

I can't agree with John Cole that Hugh Hewitt is being "disingenous" when he tries to pin the New York Times with a false equivalence argument.
Intellectually dishonest, yes. Selectively cherry-picking evidence, absolutely. But disingenuous ? Nahh.
Hewitt is who he is; he was a Republican operative, a sort of minor league Karl Rove, long before he ever became a commentator. He doesn't explicitly announce that, but neither does he try to hide it.
So he has to be read that way -- in the same manner that you would read a blog by, say, Joe Trippi, or one by Ari Fleischer. You just have to remember who's talking -- a political party operative.
To paraphrase Jon Stewart, complaing that pols spin is like complaining that the monkeys at the zoo masturbate in public.
They're monkeys.
That's what they do.
Get used to it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 1:13 PM | Permalink

I stopped believing in the MSM a long time ago but then I was a Librarian. Every day I did fact checking as I helped kids do homework and Drunks settle bar bets. I was amazed how often MSM got it wrong. It was the Serbian war that finally did it for me. I found out more in about two hours of helping a highschool kid research a term paper than I did in several years of watching ABC News. MSM didn't have a clue. Night after night of bigfoot reporters standing in front of burning houses trying to fit what they saw into pre-existing storylines that had no relevance to what was actually going on.

Blogs were a revelation to me. Citizen Journalism. Newsweek Lost credibility with me years ago. NYTimes? Give me a break. But Blogs have a clean slate. If they are consistantly right I will listen. When they screw up I will drop them. But then I've spent years trying to build credible collections for everyone Liberal or Conservative and my customers never knew which I was. Time, CBS, and the Washington Post can't say the same thing. If NBC says the sky is blue I'm looking for myself.

Posted by: Robert at May 26, 2005 1:35 PM | Permalink

* No.
* N/A.
* N/A.

The model that serves us all best, is an adversarial, skeptical press. Verify. Skip the trust. Jay's examples of possibles instances of the press "fighting back" seem to mostly involve the press bringing to light 'admissions against interest' made by the government itself. It is indicative of the timidity and passivity of the press in general, that it can only steel itself to get up on its hind legs and bark back critically at the government, when the press has some supporting documentation, produced by the government itself!

Tim Golden's article was based on an Army Report on its own investigation. It passes today as an act of courage for a reporter to report on a document of this sort, rather than to spike it in obsequious observance of the Army's desire that it remain undisclosed. I don't know how the Times obtained the confidential report, but I'd wager the word "received" could be substituted for "obtained". Still, I'll take what I can get, and I'm mildly encouraged by this sign of life, although the press is still in the posture of someone processing through the information the government spews out, albeit a little more critically. We are still a long way from a press that can generate and stand by its own investigative reporting based on truly independent sources, including sources hostile to the government.

In much of the press hand-wringing over the Newsweek/Koran theater piece, you can detect a real strain of preemptive excuse-making on the part of the press. In bemoaning that terrible lapse, and in pledging to hold itself to higher and higher standards of verification, the press is absolving itself preemptively for its failure to report what it knows, or what it should know. A press, already living in risk-adverse fear of harmful market impacts brought about by Administration attacks, preoccupied with meeting every charge of bias, will not be able to reconcile its newly Olympian ethical standards and its belt-and-suspenders approach to inaccuracy or alleged bias, with its primary mission to timely, comprehensively, critically report the news.

This was just the latest episode of the Administration's use of a place-holding untruth. They ran out the attention-span clock on the story with their attacks on Newsweek and the news-media in general, despite the Administration's knowledge that Newsweek didn't have it so much wrong, as it had the wrong agency. The lie doesn't have to hold for long, in order for it to be meritorious for the Administration. The automatic amplification of Administration falsehoods by segments of the news-media itself accelerates the clock even faster, as it becomes hard to hear the truth amidst the cacophony.

Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at May 26, 2005 1:41 PM | Permalink

Steve Lovelady of CJR apparently counts himself as one of the non-simians, ie a journalist. Which supports my point, above, that "Journalists will become not so much partisans as product managers pitching a distinct, branded offering consisting of equal parts worldview and attitude. More James Wolcott, less James Reston. More snark."

Remember, it's all about attitude. Even if it's borrowed from Jon Stewart.

Posted by: thibaud at May 26, 2005 1:46 PM | Permalink

You're absolutely right, Thibaud.
But at CJR Daily, we don't pretend that we are not an online journal of opinion. After all, that's what the site is -- a running critique of journalism just committed.
We try to point out exactly what's wrong with the coverage that we find lacking, or what's right with stuff we admire, but in the end what we're doing is expressing our opinion.
That's what critics do.
That's the whole idea.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 2:00 PM | Permalink

Press Politics

The journalism that is under scrutiny currently is the product of "reality-deniers" either blind to their own ideology or incapable of confronting it. They are self-described as "reality-based", "non-partisan", neutral or objective journalists.

Posted by: Sisyphus at May 26, 2005 2:06 PM | Permalink

Great, Steve, thanks for the considered reply.

One q: you say that "what we're doing is expressing our opinion."

Yours or Stewart's? (Or perhaps you make no distinction, which might explain the odd use of the singular after the word "our"?)

Posted by: thibaud at May 26, 2005 2:37 PM | Permalink

Thibaud:

The "our" is a reference to the four or five people who staff the site on any given day. (It'd be great to add Stewart to the mix, but his going rate is a little stiff for a non-profit.)
True, while the place often operates like a participatory democracy as we hash out what to cover and what not to cover, and what to say about it, five minutes before an arbitrary deadline the participatory democracy reverts to a benevolent monarchy.
Like anyplace else, there has to just one guy who pulls the trigger. I'm the guy.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 2:48 PM | Permalink

Sisyphus:

Ah, the linguistic view -- there is no objective reality, only symbols seeking to frame that reality.
As it happens, I saw Jim Carey at lunch; he had a dollop of mayonnaise on his necktie.
He wasn't aware of it, but it was real.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 2:53 PM | Permalink

Jay, sorry for the digression, which seems to have stopped discussion in it's tracks.
Back to the subject at hand:

Yes, in the sense that it influences politics, although often in ways it does not anticipate.
No, in the sense that the last presidential election illustrates. The mainstream press, as you have noted yourself, approached 2004 campaign coverage armed with outmoded conventions and outdated forms that put it in the position of a handcuffed man trying to bat against Randy Johnson. Karl Rove knew this, and, like any good fastball pitcher, he kept his pitches in and up.
Three strikes and you're out.

It's not a matter of politics. The press has to stop resorting to he-said/she-said/devil-take-the-hindmost journalism. This is precisely the crippling flaw that Sen. Joseph McCarthy exploited to such good effect 50 years ago. Eventually it caught up with him -- but no thanks to the press of his time.

Oh, we know. A George Tenet or a Paul Bremer -- two men who fucked up as badly as anyone can -- receive presidential medals, while good men die like dogs and thiefs and charlatans run free.
It's starting to feel like a five-year run of reading only Mad magazine.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 26, 2005 10:06 PM | Permalink

Yes, the press is a political animal--or rather, animals. Each newspaper and periodical, and each journalist, has a political point of view which informs what it publishes, and what he/she writes. To pretend otherwise is to deny the obvious. The public can best be served by knowing the politics up front, and having the press drop the fiction of objectivity. So, the politics the press "should" have are transparent ones.

That said, there used to be an overarching principle of allegiance to the country and its people that (at least often) overrode personal, partisan, or financial concerns. I'm not speaking about a blind "my country right or wrong," but a weighing of the relative importance of a story and the likelihood it is to actually be true, with the damage it is likely to cause. A very high standard of truth and importance should be applied to a story with a high potential for damage. The simple fact that a thing is true does not automatically mean it's either newsworthy or that it ought to be published. That is a judgment call, and weighing the consequences of publishing something should be in the mix--such considerations certainly used to be factored into the equation (see here).

As far as the use of anonymous sources goes, there are some rather simple rules that, if applied, would go a long way towards fixing that problem. But the press is too attached to the anonymous source to give it up easily or limit it much, I'm afraid. See this.

Posted by: neo-neocon at May 26, 2005 10:14 PM | Permalink

I think you might agree, Neo, that if the press were doing what you suggest, then in cases were it made a "good" judgment by your lights, and decided against printing a true story because it was not worth the possible damage to U.S. interests, or added danger to US troops, then you and I would, by definition, never know about any of these cases-- or the decision that was made.

Based on what I know of how newsmaking works at the top firms, the kind of judgment you describe happens a lot. But that's beside the point because my knowledge is so unreliable. We don't know how often the press holds stories because the stories don't come out.

Steve: I think your critique of the "there is no objective reality" people misses the mark by miles and miles. There may be some who under the spell of one academic conceit or another think there is no objective reality out there, but James Carey is not one, I am not one, and most of the people you would laugh at for holding these views actually hold views that are nothing at all like the proposition you are laughing at.

"There is no objective reality, only symbols seeking to frame that reality" isn't even close to what Carey says or means. He knows there's a world out there prior and indifferent to our perceptions of it. It doesn't care what we say about it.

Yet he also says, and I agree, there is no way for human beings to apprehend that world except through symbols and our tools of representation. That is a very different proposition. Intellectually it leads to very different places than your parody sketch.

In journalism this often comes down to seeing news as what is found vs. news as what is made. Carey and I (and Andrew Cline, I bet) think "news" must be a thing made, more than a thing found, even though we recognize that finding things out and finding the truth, the facts, "what happened" are essential, and basic acts in journalism.

We believe the news is mostly made (from what journalists find in their reporting and observation) but that doesn't mean we think it's made up. We don't.

So next time you gear up for your knock on post-mod deniers of reality (or of objective truth) remember what Rosen said: that you are getting it almost totally wrong. And you, Lovelady, are the author of most of the claims you are rejecting.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 12:54 AM | Permalink

John Cole has written another post. Again, he takes issue with certain flip, extreme and reflexive views on the right calling the news media anti-military, a charge he rejects as absurd and wrong.

This is even more hard hitting than his earlier critique of Hewitt. See A Response to Rick.

Follow the necessary logic to get to this laughable implication of treason. First, you must believe that the media is anti-military. Not just anti-military, but anti-American. Not just anti-American, but willing accomplices of the enemy, and thus, treasonous. Second, you must believe that defending the right of the those treasonous media types to report freely is also treasonous. It is, at its worst, an argument of treason by insinuation, and its absurdity is matched only by how offensive it is.
I reject all of this. The media is not, as an institution, anti-military. The media is, however, suspicious of the military establishment, and for good reasons. The Pentagon routinely lies to them. See Tillman, Pat. Or the Pentagon Papers. Or any hundreds of other similar events. At any rate, even if the press is suspicious of the military establishment, Rick is somehow confusing criticism of the Pentagon with criticism of tthe actual soldiers as well as the goals of the United States.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 1:15 AM | Permalink

"No, in the sense that the last presidential election illustrates. The mainstream press, as you have noted yourself, approached 2004 campaign coverage armed with outmoded conventions and outdated forms that put it in the position of a handcuffed man trying to bat against Randy Johnson. Karl Rove knew this, and, like any good fastball pitcher, he kept his pitches in and up."

Steve,

Even if Rove ignores the mainstream press it is political. Politics is all about who see and who you don't. Politicians do not have the time or money to see everyone.

Posted by: Tim at May 27, 2005 8:19 AM | Permalink

Yes, but its role in the political ecology is equivalent to the role played by the Egyptian plover to Nile Crocodiles (the political system). Without the plovers removing leeches (i.e. corruption) from the gums of the crocs, the crocodiles would soon loose their teeth and die. When the crocs enter water in which leeches are thriving, the plovers need to work especially hard.

it depends upon the situation. In a "divided" government, the ecosystem ensures that the environment is not overly friendly to leeches, and the plovers can go about their business in a normal (impartial) fashion. But when one party controls both Houses of Congress and the White House, the leeches have an ecosystem highly favorable to them -- and the plovers have to get very aggressive if the crocodiles are to survive.

when the leeches are being removed effectively, and the crocodiles stay healthy.

In other words, the press should not be "partisan" --- it should not take a particular political point of view and advance it consistently. It should take an "oppositional" role only when one is necessary --- when one party wields all power in Washington, and is doing so without regard to the long-term health of the nation.

The press needs to be much more aggressive right now; it needs to take the approach it took toward Clinton and "Monicagate", reminding its audience at every opportunity why there is a problem....

1) every time the "war on terror" comes up, it should point out that Bush ignored warnings of the 9-11 attacks, and then tried to cover it up.

2) every time Iraq comes up, the press should point out that Bush lied about WMDs and his decision to go to war, and then tried to cover it up.

3) every time Social Security comes up, the press should remind its readers that Bush has lied, and continues to lie, about Social Security going bankrupt, etc...

Posted by: rsmythe at May 27, 2005 8:58 AM | Permalink

re: "We believe the news is mostly made (from what journalists find in their reporting and observation) but that doesn't mean we think it's made up. We don't."

Exactly.

re: no objective reality

Certainly reality exists. It's the objective point of view that's a fiction. No man can stand outside of reality, look in, and then describe it as it is. The reality is certainly there (and we humans are very clever at measuring and manipulating it), but we perceive it, and relay it, through many filters.

Posted by: acline at May 27, 2005 10:51 AM | Permalink

Jay --

Take a deep breath, son.
It was a gibe, already, not a full-blown intellectual argument and certainly not an attack. Parody simplifies and exaggerates; that's it's nature.
Believe it or not I'm well-aware of Jim's work ...and of the various twists and turns in linguistic theory that go all the way back to Lichtenstein .
I'm also aware that Bishop Barkely plowed this ground -- the impossibility of ascertaining the nature of a reality distorted by perception -- centuries ago, and that most of what has been said since consists of rehash and refinement.
It's true, I am a country boy ... but it's also true that the turnip truck brought me into town a long time ago. At the time, you were maybe six years old.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 27, 2005 10:58 AM | Permalink

Sorry, Steve. You were joking? Fine, it sounded jocular, for sure. And this may sound wacky I know, but experience tells me there is such thing as being prejudiced against ideas. (Ideas, not the people who bear them.) And I'm not saying you are. But you might have spoken that way.

In truth, I have no idea what works of the masters near and far you have mastered. Or how much of Jim Carey you absorbed. Or how liberal, how catholic your thought.

But it would be fascinating to find out and match those great books up with what I would call newsroom style in intellectual matters. For whatever reasons (but I'm sure you have them) you will sometimes call on this style.

To my mind it is unconvincing. But then I don't like that style, anywhere it appears. You might even say I'm prejudiced against it.

Back to the matter at hand: answers to the three questions I asked of Drum. He e-mailed me for some clarifications. Don't know, we may see something in reply at WashingtonMonthly.com. I wonder if Hugh Hewitt has ideas he will post. I also want to know what people think of Instapundit's answers.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 11:49 AM | Permalink

I certainly agree, Jay, that we wouldn't know about the stories the press is holding back. Can we assume there are some? It's certainly possible--but how many, or what they may be, you are correct in saying we can never know.

But that doesn't mean there's no way to make a judgment. There are enough stories they do print that, IMHO, should have been left unpublished because they fail the test of truth, good sourcing, or negative consequences far outweighing the public's need to know.

In fact, the classic discussion on this point (I believe it was during the 90s, between Peter Jennings and another well-known newsman--unfortunately, I just Googled it and can't find the link, and I don't have time right now to look further) included a statement that the newsmen in question would not supress a story even if it directly harmed US troops. So, between that, and many recent events, I, personally, begin to wonder whether journalists today are in fact holding back on stories for reasons of either truth or consequences.

Posted by: neo-neocon at May 27, 2005 1:35 PM | Permalink

You don't like what you call "newsroom style in intellectual matters" because you find it to be deeply anti-intellectual.
But it's just one extension of what we might call the newsroom's mindset of universal skepticiism. Skeptical toward academics, yes. But also skeptical toward cops, priests, corporations, politicians, lawyers, miitary commanders (as opposed to commandos) or anyone else who represents authority.
In a way -- although both academics and hardened news hound would reject the comparison out-of-hand -- in its own unacademic way it is a profoundly academic outlook: question everything, take nothing, including yesterday's wisdom, at face value.
Sometimes the sardonic flip side of "question everything" becomes "mock everything" [see Stewart, Jon] and I suspect that it's that too that you find irritating, especially in instances when you imagine that it's directed at academia.
But I digress. For purposes of this conversation, the point here is that the credo that grows out of this outlook is "Trust no one," and by this credo Isikoff's sin becomes a primary one and Isikoff himself becomes Exhibit A:
He did trust someone, he didn't question insistently enough or persistenly enough, and, sure enough, he got badly burned.
I'd wager the case study is being codified in journalism classrooms from coast to coast, even as we speak.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 27, 2005 1:39 PM | Permalink

Jay: "I also want to know what people think of Instapundit's answers."

Seeing as what I wrote on my blog agrees with Reynold's answers on the 2d and 3d questions, I will offer some thoughts on the first.

There is a line to be drawn between "right wing" criticism of national media organizations that present news from a social responsibility/social justice perspective and the "the right wing press destruction machine".

It's healthy to criticize right and left wing pundits that push the victim card and approach a paranoid style - as John Cole does, for example.

However, I found this in EJ Dione's column, Assault On the Media, incredibly hypocritical:

They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.

In fact, isn't this the heart of the "fake but accurate" journalism defense? Doesn't this describe the narrative bias and how news is "made"?

What I find most telling is that much of the press is it's own echo chamber, relying on each other (supposed competitors) and wire services uncritically for "made" news. Why?

If the press wants to operate under the cynical notion that everyone lies to them, assume the worst and question motives, why not other journalists?

Posted by: Sisyphus at May 27, 2005 1:41 PM | Permalink

Steve... As Mark J. McPherson said: Verify. Skip the trust. If you want to put it down to ye ole' newsroom skepticism, fine by me. Who can be against that?

neo-neocon; the "classic discussion" you are talking about involved Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace and a hypothetical question about traveling behind enemy lines with the "North Kosanese." It is a display of the arrogance and cluelessness of media celebrity.

Wallace flunked moral reasoning on that show. He also intimidated Jennings into flunking, which is fascinating as a contest among dueling television stars, both trying to be in the situation and think, "how do I look?" at the same time.

In the tape, the contrasts between media culture and the military culture are glaring. What strikes me about it, each time I watch, is how the speakers from the military were intellectually way ahead of the media people, in the sense of going down roads they had traveled many times in their minds, connected to a sense of honor and a grasp of fateful consequence. They had struggled more, and so knew the problem inside-out.

Wallace was winging it, and mugging for the camera, like a rich kid who doesn't have to study. Or a "live" recruiting poster for the culture war, hamming it up and enrolling thousands an hour on the opposite side.

But you would have a hard time persuading me that a hypothetical on a PBS forum with two celebrity journalists is very good evidence of what the news media have done in real situations with sensitive stories.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 2:18 PM | Permalink

What strikes me about it, each time I watch, is how the speakers from the military were intellectually way ahead of the media people, in the sense of going down roads they had traveled many times in their minds, connected to a sense of honor and a grasp of fateful consequence. They had struggled more, and so knew the problem inside-out.

you call the military's desire to save its own skin "way ahead intellectually?" I'd call it intellectual justification for naked self-interest.

A press that makes its decisions based on chavanism winds up being little more than Pravda --- as we saw in the wind up to the Iraq war, where Bush regime officials were permitted to lie, distort, and exaggerate without practically no challenge by the media. There were lots and lots of people --- especially those who read the foreign press, or were paying enough attention to find the truth buried on page A18 of the New York Times --- that were well aware of the Bush regime's lies and manipulations. But the mass media felt it was "disloyal" to call the honesty and integrity of the President into question, and as a result we've spent over $300,000,000,000, thousands upon thousands of Americans are dead or permanantly disabled, and tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. And all we have to show for it is pictures of Iraqis waving blue fingers.

I want a press corps that reports what is happening, not acting as an agent of the United States Government. And if that means that some Americans will be killed during a war, so be it --- that is what war is about. If the reporter in question hadn't been told about the ambush, the American soldiers would have been just as dead.

The real question that should have been asked is what a French reporter should do in that situation ... and in a reverse situation where the French reporter has information that could save the lives of Kosanese soldiers whom the Americans are planning on killing. When we take the chauvinism out of the equation, suddenly the answer becomes much clearer....

and there is no intellectual gymnastics needed to justify violating journalistic neutrality.

Posted by: rsmythe at May 27, 2005 2:38 PM | Permalink

It's not that Wallace gave the wrong answer, or wasn't sufficiently pro-American in his remarks. In the hypothetical as stated, one could give deeply reasoned answers to any of the available choices: warn, don't warn. But this is what Jennings and Wallace could not do, or at any rate didn't do. Their answers were superficial. The skeptics were caught flat.

I have to add, on another subject, that I think it's a significant event--also a healthy one--when we start to see intra-party backlash and debate on the excesses of the Cultural Right's media project (Drum called it "the right wing press destruction machine") with a member of the Liberate Iraq Coalition, John Cole, starting to object to the fundamentalist impulses, party-line behavior and political extremism he's seeing in the reactions to Newsweek events.

Cole's newfound skepticism about where this project ultimately goes ("many of you guys out there don't want an independent media- you want a damned public relations firm...")is telling us something.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 2:50 PM | Permalink

Neo-neocon:

I speak here only for myself, not other editors.
But in the five years I was the managing editor of a fairly large newsroom (500 folks) with a reputation for aggressive journalism, I doubt if a week passed in which I didn't hold back one or another story.
It's so routine that it goes uncommented on. I held back stories for as many reasons as there were examples: I didn't want to compromise an FBI negotiation with a hostage taker; I didn't want to blow the cover of an underground cop; I thought Story X had too many holes in it; I didn't think Story Y supported its own premise; I thought Story Z needed more work, and on, and on.
Heck, I once pulled the plug on an investigation in which I had invested seven months of two reporters time and God knows how many of the newspaper's dollars. Why ? I became convinced the effort, ambitious as it was, was ill-conceived and, worse, going nowhere.
When you make the right decisions, no one ever knows. When you make a wrong one, everyone knows.
In the business, there's a cliche' so old that it has moss on it, but it lives on because it's true:
Doctors bury their mistakes; lawyers send theirs to jail; editors put theirs on page one for all the world to see.
That's not a complaint; I loved the job; it's just a fact that accompanies you to that job every day.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 27, 2005 2:59 PM | Permalink

Re: Steve's example

Something that frustrates me about so much criticism of the news media is that it forgets, or refuses to accept, a simple truth that we may see in Steve's remarks: Journalism is an honorable practice by people trying, for the most part, to do the right thing. I think those who *always* see the bad, and ascribe to it politically nefarious intentions, are themselves guilty of such intentions: using media criticism as a method of political struggle divorced from the good work of improving journalism (no matter who practices it).

Posted by: acline at May 27, 2005 3:23 PM | Permalink

I agree with that, Andrew. What's really tragic about it, Neo, is that for many of the decisions Steve talks about the decision is exactly the one you and your neighbors would make if you were running the newspaper and talked it out, and had to in the end decide. But the impression created by the culture war is the opposite.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 3:33 PM | Permalink

Jay, there is a difference ... regardless of culture war perceptions.

The degree of difference contributes to disaffection (arrogant, out of touch, elitist). That doesn't speak to honor or political motivations - that's the culture war component.

APME survey on use of graphic news photos

Andy, "I think those who *always* see the bad, and ascribe to it politically nefarious intentions, are themselves guilty of such intentions ..."

Your not talking about journalists here?

Posted by: Sisyphus at May 27, 2005 4:26 PM | Permalink

That APME survey is fascinating.
I'm surprised the gap between journalists and readers was only 15%; I'd have guessed a larger split on the question of printing some of those pictures.
But it's a useful exercise to take the test, because it puts you in the shoes of editors who have to make those decisions all the time, because the photos do keep on coming.
In Philadelphia, the liveliest and most emotional debate we had in my time was what to do with the photo of the Pennsylvania state treasurer, who pulled a gun and blew his own brains out at a press conference he had called himself. (He had been caught redhanded taking bribes.)
We debated long into the night, and finally let the story dominate page one -- but we put the photo on page A17.
On one like that, you're know you'll take heat no matter which way you decide.
Did the fact that he was a liberal Democrat enter into the debate ? Get real. When a state official calls a press conference in order to commit suicide in front of the world, it doesn't matter if he's a Fascist or a Trotskyite, or a Martian; that's news.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 27, 2005 5:25 PM | Permalink

Sys- re: always ascribing bad intentions

Journalists can certainly be guilty of this. I would call them bad journalists just as I would call those who always ascribe nefarious intentions to the press bad critics.

Posted by: acline at May 27, 2005 5:41 PM | Permalink

There is a danger, Jay, in hearing the opposition confirm your prejudices. It's often mistaken for "refreshing candor", and thus accorded a commensurate amount of credibility.

In this case, I speak of John Cole's suspicion that conservative watch-dogging and criticism of our liberal media friends are merely a desire for conservative public relations. This swerves uncomfortably close to Dan Rather's bromide that conservatives think the media is biased simply because it doesn't reflect their own biases.

Please consider that conservatives can claim "liberal bias", and our media friends can very well be guilty of actual liberal bias. It's not always a matter of charge and counter-charge cancelling each other out. Somebody (perhaps conservatives) may be right.

Posted by: Trained Auditor at May 27, 2005 5:44 PM | Permalink

"Swerves uncomfortably close?" You lost me. The question is whether it's true, what Cole is saying, not close to what some icon of your untruth once said. Dan Rather knew very little about the people he was classifying. John Cole knows quite a bit. Do we really have to compare them?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 27, 2005 7:22 PM | Permalink

"Something that frustrates me about so much criticism of the news media is that it forgets, or refuses to accept, a simple truth that we may see in Steve's remarks: Journalism is an honorable practice by people trying, for the most part, to do the right thing. I think those who *always* see the bad, and ascribe to it politically nefarious intentions, are themselves guilty of such intentions: using media criticism as a method of political struggle divorced from the good work of improving journalism (no matter who practices it)."

Yes, but journalists and column-writers seem to forget this when they are reporting on other professions. Who more than journalists always finds and parades the bad among cops, doctors, businessmen, clergy, politicians, etc.? That's what makes it news, just as journalists screwing up is also news.

The Newsweek story was way overplayed, but somehow I find it difficult to feel sorry for those poor journalists when a feeding frenzy hits them over some sloppy bit of reporting. At least Newsweek didn't go the full Rather and continue issuing patently absurd defenses of itself beyond the initial news cycle.

Posted by: Brian at May 27, 2005 9:12 PM | Permalink

Brian --
I'm not sure I follow the logic here.
So when we find, in your words, "bad cops, doctors, businessmen, clergy, politicians," we shouldn't share the details of our findings?
True, that ethic that would leave us with a lot of time on our hands to go to the track, study our horoscopes, feed on leisurely lunches, play the stock market and pursue sexual dalliances ... but if we had wanted to do that, we'd have gone into other lines of work in the first place, wouldn't we ?
Besides, is that kind of obliviousness really what B. Franklin and T. Jefferson had in mind when they designed the system ?
Somehow, I doubt it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 27, 2005 11:14 PM | Permalink

Wasn't there something about the first rule of journalism being that all governments lie?
Speaking as an outsider who picked up a bit of journalism 101 and with frequent opportunity to talk about it with actual journalists, it seems to me that 90% of the problem could be solved by simply asking a follow up question and reporting the results.
So that, for instance "soandso says: we see X happening" becomes "soandso says: "we see X happening", but upon questioning couldn't provide clear evidence of a relevant study". In other cases this becomes "he said/she said and what he said was wrong". Obviously this is not always possible, either because the journalist in question does not know the facts, or the facts are in dispute. On top of which, this practice would made many stories more complicated (a less simple tale which doesn't fit as conveniently into predetermined segments) and in many, many cases would probably reveal to the audience, that there isn't really a story, just the usual suspects making the usual noise.
Still, I believe that's what is meant by fighting back, (and what will IMHO be the only form of added value journalism can provide once it can no longer keep the gates guarded because every interest group has direct access to its base and every citizen has acces to every press release.)

Posted by: markus at May 27, 2005 11:51 PM | Permalink

But it's just one extension of what we might call the newsroom's mindset of universal skepticiism. Skeptical toward academics, yes. But also skeptical toward cops, priests, corporations, politicians, lawyers, miitary commanders (as opposed to commandos) or anyone else who represents authority. -Steve Lovelady

Why just the people who represent authority? One of my major problems with big parts of the media relates to their deep skepticism of one side of a story, combined with great credulity towards the other. From where I stand, that looks a lot like bias- but I suppose it is just barely possible that it could be that a lot of journalists have gotten in the habit of being skeptical of authority, and have forgotten that they're supposed to be skeptical of everyone else, too.

Just because some group doesn't represent authority does not mean they're more credible than someone who does.

Posted by: rosignol at May 28, 2005 9:20 AM | Permalink

rosignol, I think it's part of the narrative bias where the "story" has protagonists and antagonists combined with the "afflict the comforable, comfort the afflicted" bias that drives who gets put in each role. The press loves an underdog story, the Noble Savage, even if it distorts "reality".

Posted by: Sisyphus at May 28, 2005 10:28 AM | Permalink

Hi, Jay. Long time, no talk. We used to trade posts.
I've left journalism to become an educator.
Thanks for the link to the Taiibi column.
I just linked to it at my blog:
http://scoopstories.typepad.com/
I'll be reading you and hope you do likewise. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: Scott Butki at May 28, 2005 10:39 AM | Permalink

Markus, Rosignol:

Yes, the original sentiment is "All governments lie," and that is indeed the bias, or rather the starting point of most journalistic inquiry.
The thought was first penned, I believe, by George Orwell, the patron saint of today's investigative reporters, in the seminal essay, Politics and the English Language, published in 1946.
An elaboration on the premise came somewhat later from I.F. Stone:
"All governments lie. They fudge and omit. They bury and muffle inconvenient facts. They do this repeatedly, relentlessly, shamelessly."
The concomitant thought -- that it is the writer's job "to undo the folded lie" -- comes from W.H. Auden.
It's entirely possible that all three were misguided, of course.
But, frankly, I haven't seen anything in my 40 years of eligibility to vote that might dispute their premises.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 28, 2005 7:27 PM | Permalink

I'm in agreement with the poster who said the problem isn't the skepticism of the press, it's the fact that the skepticism is unevenly applied. Skepticism of certain authorities on one hand is combined with credulity towards others, I'm afraid. It's not a winning combination, and it's what accounts for the perception (and perhaps, the reality) of bias.

As for Steve's comments--I appreciate the information, and I have no doubt that you, and other newspeople and journalists, sit on certain stories for a number of reasons. But I thought it was interesting that, at least as far as I could tell, all of the examples you gave were fairly local and/or criminal in nature. That's not the focus of my concern, alt