The consequences of journalists taking center stage.
On May 26, 2004, the New York Times printed a long litany of errors in their coverage of the Iraq War. “We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been,” the Editors said. “In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.” The Times was certainly not alone in its guilt; and at least the “paper of record” had the guts to admit their error, unlike most other news sources.
But those 1100 word in the Times did not spark a new public discourse about the defective media culture of the United States. Such dialogues must be carried on in the media.
Unfortunately, the media, in the four years that followed, took the attitude that the errors were “all in the past,” and that things were different now. The article itself contained the seeds of that suppressing argument: “Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for the New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of the Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review’s critique of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence reporting.” Because of that “complexity,” no one was disciplined at the Times. No one took responsibility.
As instrumental as the paper was in spreading the lies and unchallenged government statements that got us into Iraq, the New York Times does not contain the root cause of the sickness of our media culture, and their 2004 mea culpa certainly does not mark the end of it. It’s difficult to mark a beginning, but the series of titanic errors that got us where we are now began back in 2000 with the election of George W. Bush.
“Lockbox” and “Strategery”
I was 12 years old when Darrell Hammond and Will Ferrell spoke those words, under the guises of Al Gore and George Bush, on Saturday Night Live. The debate moderator had asked them each to sum up their campaigns in one word. I remember thinking it terribly funny. And of course I was bemused by the entire process. Al Gore seemed so old and so stiff, compared to happy guy George W. Bush. “Who would you want to have a beer with?” was the criterion du jour for selecting a President, and although I wasn’t a beer-drinker at the time, my answer was George W. Bush. It didn’t help when Al Gore, after a presidential debate, tried to shake his stiff-as-a-board image by sucking the lips off his wife. As a 12-year-old, I reacted as you might expect a 12-year- old to react: with discomfort. Old people were kissing. Of course, I didn’t flee the room, and the incident faded in my mind fairly quickly.
The media’s reaction was a bit more hysterical. “Did they try out different positions? Or several lengths of time? And did the responses — from the focus group, that is, not from Tipper — vary significantly according to ethno-cultural background?” wrote John O’Sullivan in the National Review, on Sept. 11, 2000. As I recall, “The Kiss” came to dominate media coverage of the campaign for days and days. It was either Gore’s death knell or a brilliant strategic ploy.
And then there were things that I didn’t find out about George Bush and Al Gore until years later. I didn’t find out about Al Gore’s passion for environmental issues, because media consultants had advised him that it would seem too square. I didn’t find out that Bush had mocked a condemned woman’s plea for mercy before sending her to the chamber with an exaggerated “please don’t kill me!” And I certainly didn’t find out about any of Bush’s or Gore’s associates or issue positions.
That’s not to say that I couldn’t have found out these things. But it would have been an effort. Most people won’t make an effort. They expect, reasonably, to have things presented to them accurately in the newspaper and on television.
The media’s approach — covering the presidential election like a sporting event — led the public to select (or not, but that’s a whole other issue) a choice who has now, in a variety of ways, been recognized as the wrong man for the job. Al Gore went on to win a Nobel Prize; George Bush went on to win an 18 percent approval rating.
Not much changed in 2004, and things are looking only a little better this year. And all this is only one facet of our flawed media. So, how did things get this way?
The Watergate Myth
It’s useful to keep in mind that the journos that are currently in the top ranks of the media establishment — the ones who set the agenda, the ones whose names are known to the public — entered their trade in the shadow of Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein became avatars of journalism at its best, and brought down an administration that was widely reviled.
The time of Watergate was a time of exploding interest in the journalistic profession. Interest that, according to UC San Diego professor Michael Schudson, began well before the events of Watergate. Perhaps it was a result of all the upheavals of the decade, but, in any case, Watergate was the culmination.
Journalism schools were flooding with students; schools across the country saw application rates and enrollment rates increase. But did Watergate really change the way journalism happened? In his book Watergate in American Memory, Schudson argues that, in important ways, things stayed the same.
“Not surprisingly, the myth of Watergate-in-journalism, journalism transformed by Watergate, serves two masters,” Schusdon writes. “The government, which can employ it to portray itself as unfairly besieged, and journalism, which can use it to present itself as a brave and independent social force. Both usages veil the fact that the relationship between public officials and the press in Washington is, for the most part, comfortable and cooperative.”
Schudson argues that the real, significant change created by Watergate was what he describes as the “celebrification” of journalism. “By the 1980s the call for televisable journalists was enormous, from Nightline to The McLaughlin Group, both of which, as James Fallows has observed, ‘magnify journalists’ celebrity and blur the distinction between journalists and politicians.’ Once celebrified on television, journalists became more bankable on the lecture circuit, as well,” he writes.
The “scoop” experienced, and is still experiencing, a resurgence as the currency of success in the journalistic profession. Schudson quoted Ben Bradlee: “[They] covered the most routine rural fires as if they were Watergate and would come back and argue that there was gasoline in the hose and the fire chief was an anti-Semite and they really thought that was the way to fame and glory.”
The readiest source of scoops is not the place where Bernstein and Woodward found them, outside of Washington, in conversation with shadowy people, in looking through piles of papers. The readiest source is from the mouths of important public officials. As a result of this fact, public officials, the very people journalists are supposed to be scrutinizing, have become the most valuable resource for an ambitious journalist.
Always Off the Record
The consequences of this relationship are not merely abstract. Witness the statement of Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, regular interviewer of sitting Presidents and Heads of State: “My personal policy is always off the record when talking to government officials unless specified.” There isn’t any good reason for Russert to have that as his “personal policy” other than as some sort of act of friendship.
And Russert exhibits another behavior predicted by Schudson: the appearance of aggression without its substance. Russert raises his voice on Meet the Press, but the questions themselves are rarely the ones that I want answered. Most often, Russert’s approach is to quote something critical of the guest and then to ask for the guest to respond. The same approach was in evidence at the recent debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Russert interrupted both candidates repeatedly, but not with good reason, or really, with any new questions based on what the candidates were saying. Interrupting the candidates made Russert look like a tough adversarial journalist, but none of the adversity was actually there.
Russert gets people on the phone to tell him secrets, and gets people on his television show to talk with him because he has an understanding with the powerful: the powerful will give him ‘scoops’ and give him interviews, increasing his prestige in the Washington press circle, and in return he will act as a venue — a friendly venue — for those secrets and those interviews.
Gridiron Club
Russert isn’t alone in his approach to covering the powerful, however. The elite politicos and journalists of Washington gather once a year for the White House Correspondents Association dinner, an evening of yukking it up with the President. Recently, at another, less public white tie gala at the Gridiron Club, President Bush sang a song referencing ‘Brownie,’ his disastrous FEMA appointee, and convicted felon Scooter Libby, who covered for the president and vice president and was in return was spared prison.
The press has the responsibility to hold Bush accountable on both of those issues. Doesn’t laughing at the president’s off-key yodeling on the subject tend to compromise their tough stance?
Two years ago, the WHCA made the mistake of inviting Stephen Colbert to be the entertainment at the dinner. Colbert drove straight to what was really funny about the whole affair: “Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction!”
Colbert didn’t get many laughs from that room; one of the only people reportedly laughing was Antonin Scalia, and he has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. The spectacle and the embarassment suffered by the journalists there led publications like the New York Times to intimate that they’d no longer be participating in the dinners.
Did 9/11 Change Everything?
On the world stage, the answer is no. Yes, it changed some things, but other stayed the same as they had been. But the Bush Administration attempted to bring about a total paradigm shift, and they weren’t challenged on it in a meaningful way by the press. When the term “Global War on Terror” was introduced, questions about what it would mean for foreign policy in real, practical terms were not asked. The same for “Axis of Evil.” And as the run-up towards war took place, the impression I got was not of a critical media, but of a media swept up in the historic quality of the moment.
Fox News swirled and blared with color and lights and countdowns to various deadlines. The mood was one of mounting excitement.
And why not? A war has a lot to offer the press. There isn’t any such thing as a “war correspondent” if there isn’t a war — and no job is more glamorous than that of war correspondent. The impulse of journalists at the time was to be on screen and on the page during these events. Here was their chance to enter the pantheon along with Edward R. Murrow, Peter Jennings, and the guy that was on the radio during the Hindenberg catastrophe. To be the intermediary between the public and history. The payoff of questioning whether the history should have been taking place was less immediate.
That’s why, when Bush landed on the aircraft carrier in his flight suit, the media reaction was not one of disgust at Bush, a civilian, taking on the mantle of military might to plump his ego. It was gushing about the historic nature of the day, and about how good and strong Bush looked coming out of that fighter jet. However good Bush looked, that’s how good the reporters looked.
And standing on the roof of a Baghdad hotel while bombs fall behind you is a wonderful vantage point from which to self-mythologize.
Sam Jack ’11 (sjack@fas) thinks Tipper Gore is looking a whole lot better.