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September 15, 2004
Campaign Puzzler: How the Press Comes Out with a WinIf a newsroom boss had walked into a conference room a year ago and asked a team of political journalists, gathered to plan election coverage, "how can we come out with a win in 2004?" I am reasonably sure that puzzled glances would have been exchanged around the table...This developed as the conclusion, or part two of yesterday’s post, Stark Message for the Legacy Media. … For around the table, the traditional assumption would have held: it’s the candidates, the parties, the players who are trying to prevail and beat the other guy. We’re the press, we cover the campaign. It’s not our role to affect the outcome. We’re there to tell people what happens, and ask questions. We’re there to dig and get answers. We’re not running for anything. We’re a kind of umpire, at best. So what do you mean by win, boss person? Well, the press doesn’t and shouldn’t try to win the election for a candidate or a cause. But they had all been in situations when they suddenly felt sick with disappointment at how effectively they had been sidelined by a certain tactic, how thoroughly they had been manipulated by certain actors, how far from the real issues and problems they had once again strayed, how little, in fact, they were serving voters by covering what they were covering, even though they were just covering what every other political journalist thought worth covering, even though they were completing the exhausting ritual—campaign coverage—as it then stood. How many of you, the boss might have asked, ever felt professionally defeated in that way? All hands would shoot up. There is a lot about campaign journalism that smart journalists are sick of. And this is the moment a wise boss would have waited for. So let me get this straight. (He might have said.) When you have lost during the campaign you absolutely know it. I come to this meeting to ask you how we can win in 2004, and the question doesn’t even make sense. Why? I think that’s unaffordable. It may be part of our legacy, but we cannot afford it in practice. Agenda-less journalism has gone the way of the punch card system in computing. Generally speaking, newsroom bosses don’t have that kind of discussion with their best political people. In fact their legacy is not to have it. The press knows it can lose in the campaign struggle, and wind up reporting the news but distracting the nation. It cannot say clearly, which also means openly, what for the press is a win. This is part two. Part one is Stark Message for the Legacy Media: “Journalists find before them, with 50 days left, a campaign overtaken by Vietnam, by character issues, attacks, and fights about the basic legitimacy of various actors— including the press itself, including Dan Rather. It’s been a dark week. And the big arrow is pointing backwards.” Latest PressThink: Rather’s Satisfaction: Mystifying Troubles at CBS. Andrew Cline at Rhetorica says, in reply, that the question, “how can the press win?” effectively “highlights the lack of criteria by which journalists could measure something called success.” I do not want to suggest criteria now. Instead, I’d like to suggest something that might lead to the discovery of criteria: Tell a different story. Now we’re talking— and thinking. Read the rest. What’s a Loss for the Campaign Press Corps? Paul Farhi, reporting in the Washington Post, Sep. 16: “The Democratic presidential nominee has not held a formal news conference or even answered questions from smaller groups of reporters — an ‘avail’ in campaign-speak — in more than a month. In the two weeks before the Democratic National Convention, Kerry spoke to the media just twice, answering a total of six questions. “If anything, President Bush has been less available on the campaign trail, and in the White House generally. The president delegates all press inquiries to his White House communications staff and his reelection campaign. He has not taken a question from the reporters who are following his campaign for several weeks.” — For Media on Campaign Trail, Little Access to Candidates (WP). When you say obsolete, you mean….? Here’s a big picture view from from PressThink reader Mark J. McPherson in the comments, using the new lingo MSM for Mainstream Media. … Legacy Media is an awkward phrase for an institution that has, through self-mutation, rendered itself obsolete. The advent of cable television and the freedom of the Internet gave the 500 an unlimited opportunity to primp and preen. Cable yawned before the MSM as an awesome chasm of airspace to be filled, and the simultaneous conglomertization demanded that it be done on the cheap. And what in this wide world is cheaper than talk, talk, talk? Bureaus and in-depth investigations were seen as losers instead of loss leaders. So at the very time the content demand was growing exponentially, MSM was pulling its own intelligence circuits off-line, playing both the Dave Bowman and Hal 9000 roles.
Posted by Jay Rosen at September 15, 2004 11:43 AM
Comments
Step one: Get a Clue Another professor, the chairman of New York University’s Journalism Department, Jay Rosen, said USA Today is acting more professionally and that it sees no risk from re-examination of the story. “CBS has acted cluelessly throughout the whole process. It has not acted like a confident, strong organization that is sure of itself and its mission,” Mr. Rosen said. “Clearly, USA Today appears to have less at stake here than CBS.” Mr. Rosen said an inability to constructively engage outside criticism is a problem in many news organizations, and is not limited to CBS, though the network “has shown an unusual inability to reckon with the changing face of the Internet and how it related to journalism.” Posted by: Ernest Miller at September 15, 2004 12:28 PM | Permalink It's kinda funny, I was writing up my own alternate reality to respond to your previous post. Here's how I started: [While the "blogosphere" congratulates itself on "sticking it to the MSM", I think it would be useful to speculate on what might have happened in a world that valued integrity in the public sphere. In that world, some institution (perhaps a "newspaper of record" or a university department or a private foundation) would have published an analysis of the CBS story that said, in part, something like this: The weakest part of the CBS report was the revelation of new documents concerning Mr. Bush's service in the Guard. CBS won't reveal who provided the documents, why they were provided or how they came into existence. Instead, they ask us to trust them and accept these low-quality reproductions as valuable evidence. Without information about the provenance of these documents, they become nothing more than scurrilous innuendo. No respectable independent document expert can verify or debunk their authenticity without access to the actual documents and some information about their provenance.] Now, after reading this post, I think it's more useful to answer your question. Here's one possible answer: Our role as journalists covering a Presidential election is to provide a context for citizens to make reasoned decisions about the candidates. To that end, we're going to do things differently this time around. For too long, we've been cynically manipulated by the political class in this country. By our emotional attachment to the notion that we are passive observers, we've allowed those with the basest of instincts to use us as the purveyor of their peculiar brand of smut, the political smear job. This year, we're going to be consciously, openly, and consistently activist. Not for some candidate or party, but for you, our fellow citizens. We're going to layout what we think are the most important issues facing our community and provide each candidate the opportunity to address those issues. We'll also give each candidate the opportunity raise any one issue they think we've missed. We're going to search out independent thinkers who specialize in each topic area and give them the opportunity to address it. We want to provide you with information about each issue for you to make up your own mind, but we also know that true citizenship requires participation. So, we're going to be sponsoring a variety of forums for citizens to interact to discuss the issues and the candidates. We're also going to completely change our approach to campaign coverage. We are very deliberately not going to publish any articles about polls. There's nothing wrong with polls, but we believe that there are too many more important things to talk about during a political campaign. We're going to focus our coverage of the campaigns on their integrity. Every time a candidate or campaign surrogate distorts their opponents positions or statements, we think that's news. We're going to make no effort to be "balanced" in this regard. We stand proudly on the side of truth, honesty, and respect for others. We intend to try to shame the campaigns into real debate about the issues that concern all of us. Finally, we're going to turn a harsh light on the rest of our industry. Much of what passes for political journalism in this country is truly contemptible. Every time our tribe mentions the clothes the candidate wears or knowingly parrots false information, we're going to call them out to receive the ridicule they so richly deserve. We hope you hold us to the same standards. By the same token, we'll be pointing out excellence wherever we find it and we want to hear from you about that as well. That is how we intend to win this year. Posted by: John Cavnar-Johnson at September 15, 2004 12:58 PM | Permalink John, that sounds great. It's a good thing there's never ever going to be partisan disagreements over what constitutes "truth, honesty, and respect for others". Or, for that matter, reporters who insert "boos" into an audience reaction to a candidate's statement. I'm also glad that "independent thinkers" are easy to find--they probably cite that on their resumes, right? As opposed to party conformists, and we can all agree who those are because they are just too extreme for us. Once you've got the furniture arranged and all the boxes unpacked, let us know how great the press in Nirvana is. However as a statement of how the press can win I think what you've written (unconsciously) underscores some of the biggest problems with the press right now, not least of which is a hubristic delusion about their own sense of elevated standards. In fact it's a prescription for the MSM to matter even less than it does now. The press will not drive election coverage. Candidates and the public will. If candidates want to talk about Vietnam, we will be hearing about Vietnam. If the public says "we don't care about Vietnam" the candidate will find that continuing to talk about Vietnam will drive him down in the polls. The press is just passing the notes back and forth. If they don't like the substance of the notes, they can complain, for all the good it will do them. Perhaps there should be less "he said/she said" journalism. It seems to me that many journalists think the story is complete when they get two opposing voices to quote. Often, that means two partisans and the moderate middle is ignored. Perhaps there should be more "Spinsanity" style analysis of people's statements. Why not weigh and parse the language used by advocates? This shouldn't be gotcha journalism, but should fairly analyze the misrepresentations, omissions and rhetoric of the campaigns. Just some thoughts. Posted by: Ernest Miller at September 15, 2004 1:48 PM | Permalink How to turn election coverage into a win for the press -- first thoughts: Your assignment: help readers plan for their better future. On news pages: In the newsroom: Overall: Unfortunately for your hypothetical newsroom boss, many MSM journalists seem to equate a "win for journalism" and, especially, a "big public service win" with getting the people to vote for the "right" candidate. The Rathers of the industry indicate that the best way to serve the public is in helping to persuade the public to vote for the candidate that is best for them since, obviously, the public isn't smart enough to come to a conclusion on their own without being fooled by the tricky opposition. Posted by: submandave at September 15, 2004 2:43 PM | Permalink Contrast this: I found it interesting that Stirling Newberry of BOP News, who identifies Left, is not only convinced there's a credibility crisis for CBS ("the simple truth is that the equipment that existed in 1972 would not have produced this output...") but also for the "left blogsphere," which "should be ashamed of itself for backing off of demanding what we will need to demand the next time Bush pulls a secret plan to save social security out of his nether regions." Newberry's point is: a principled Left would not leap to defend Dan Rather and CBS because it likes the consequences of their reporting on Bush's National Guard years. Instead, demand what we need to see before the public can again have confidence in the report Rather aired Wednesday night.With this: One group's agenda drove it to make a strong case against the CBS story; the other group's agenda shot down some of the weaker claims the conservatives were making. Now, if you read nothing but right-wing sites like Free Republic or left-wing ones like The Daily Kos—and there are some political zombies out there I suspect of doing just that—then you're not going to be served very well. But if you look at the larger Internet, where partisans try to shoot down each other's arguments and relatively independent-minded writers weigh the results, you'll be in pretty good shape. You'll be in better shape, in fact, than if you rely entirely on the old media. The biases in blogdom are generally more transparent than the biases in the mainstream; it's not hard to take the slant of a site like Eschaton or InstaPundit into account when you're weighing its claims, whereas the assumptions obscured by the Or, of course, just visit Rosen's magazine and comment section. ;-) But I think there is a lesson for political correspondents and editors in deciding what a win means, and what objective journalism means; and how much critical reasoning fits in the structural and infrastructural biases of their medium. Posted by: Tim at September 15, 2004 3:15 PM | Permalink Swinging through links on the subject I tumbled over a "Letter from America from Alastair Cooke who wrote: Talking about the art of late negotiation - and he was a master - my old friend once told me: "Never get embroiled with professors and ideologues. Not germane, but germane. "If a newsroom boss had walked into a conference room a year ago and asked a team of political journalists, gathered to plan their election coverage, 'how can we come out with a win in 2004?' I am reasonably sure that puzzled glances would have been exchanged around the table... " Puzzled glances? In your Journalism School Ivory Tower dreams, pal. In the real world if a newsroom boss asked how they could "win", old-media journalists would assume without hesitation that "win" referred to a Kerry electoral victory, and would confidently proclaim themselves Masters of the Universe, capable of delivering 15 points easy as a prophet serving up commandments from a stone tablet. Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor, Newsweek: The real problem in the press right now, the reason they've resorted to forgery and lies (remember the "fake turkey?") is their desperate struggle to deliver those elusive 15 points. Anything less finds the Emperors of the Fourth Estate embarassingly disrobed. I sympathize with your twin desires for objective journalism and coverage of "real issues", but reforming the asylum is pointless as long as it's being run by the inmates. It doesn't matter how important the issue being covered if the reporter covering it is a known liar. Fox News has a better chance of rebuilding your Ivory Tower of Objective Journalism than your "friends" in the mainstream press. At least at Fox they have real diversity. All the "Gang of 500" cares about is keeping their 15-point promise. Posted by: 15-Point Promise at September 15, 2004 4:03 PM | Permalink "Ivory Tower of Objective Journalism." Where do you find me pushing that, Mister 15? You lost me there. Anyway, that's not my church. I have seen that Evan Thomas quote. I'm surprised you buy it, but he said it, so you're within rights to fun 75 yards down the sideline with it and score a comment board touchdown: 15 points! Ask any political pro in the Bush operation: "is Thomas right about the plus 15?" Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 15, 2004 4:40 PM | Permalink Mr. Rosen: are you saying that "the media" backing for Kerry isn't worth anything, or that it just isn't worth 15 points. Would it be better if it were worth only 10 points, or 5 points, or even a single point? Suppose "the media" were pushing Bush (wholeheartedly). Would _that_ be worth 15 points? How much was the media worth for Bill Clinton in 1996? Can you claim, with a straight face, that "the media" is neutral in the choice between Kerry and Bush? If so, do you care to offer evidence? Dave Ivers Posted by: Dave Ivers at September 15, 2004 5:08 PM | Permalink Dave: I'm saying "Evan Thomas of Newsweek confirms that pro-Kerry tilt in the press is worth 15 points" is a handy device for discovering which thing a supporter of the liberal media thesis loves more-- the reality of the race, or a comment board touchdown. His facts or his axe. Love your axe? Then take the 15 points and go nuts with your Thomas-of-Newsweek, surely-no-one-can-deny-it-now quotes. He said it, so you are within rights. But if you want your "there's a 15 point cushion for Kerry courtesy of the press" just don't ask any professional person in politics working toward a Bush victory about the possibility that such could be true, because you will not get confirmation. You will get a condescending chuckle. Matthew Dowd of the Bush team said the convention in Boston would be worth 15 points to Kerry. I put the Thomas statement in the same category as a truth claim. As to why Dowd says 15 when he thinks 3 or 4, we know how that works. I have no idea what Evan Thomas was trying to say with his statement, why he said it, or whether he believes it.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 15, 2004 6:36 PM | Permalink MSM/print, if viewed collectively, has become a bit more harsh with CBS, reporting damaging information, but MSM/print has also generated the "Fake but True" meme, which CBS is now employing in altered form itself as "Probably Not Fake But Even If So True" (At this point, Bush's record in the National Air Guard seems an entirely separate issue from the CBS docs scandal. Both are diversions now from the other.) As bad as CBS now looks, this scandal still mainly exists in the blog world and the press insider world and has leaked out less so into the wider world where the 10s of millions of network viewers live; as far as they know the CBS account is true until CBS (or another network) says it isn't. The bloggers are likely to spur the MSM/print to put a bit more pressure on CBS but until the editorial boards of MSM/print start calling for CBS to stop distorting the testimony of their own experts to cover themselves and release docs or source or until one of the other networks chooses to go after CBS in an investigative, muckracking way--the way CBS is pursuing Bush--I still am not sanguine about CBS feeling the burn enough that they'd expose their source and/or release their copies of the docs. One can hope USA Today will release its source, but if CBS can muddy the waters long enough, until someone gets tired: either bloggers (unlikely) or the MSM (more likely), they win on a split decision, source unexposed and the docs at worst "Probably Not Fake But Even If Fake True." No? Posted by: Lee Kane at September 15, 2004 9:47 PM | Permalink Then that story could be entitled How the Country Come Out with a Loss: not because CBS in particular needs to "pay" or because the Guard story is anything but a tremendous distraction from the real issues of the campaign, but because if CBS in the end owns up -- and exposes its source -- there are likely to be several results: 1.) Guard stories directed at either candidate by the MSM in the future experience some automatic deligitimization, making them less likely and reducing their intensity. 2.) Anonymous sourcing takes another well-deserved hit. (I like how attacking the credibility of the President of the United States with an anonymous source is described by CBS as, in reverse-meaning-speak apparently, as following journalistic "ethics.") 3.) The press experiences an electric shock that causes real self-examination regarding non-objective motivations in story choice, gotcha journalism, scandal-mongering over "real" news reporting, etc. 4.) The press sense of entitlement takes a hit. All good things. But the source needs to be exposed for it to happen, I think. Posted by: Lee Kane at September 15, 2004 9:58 PM | Permalink Gee, Jay, where's the outrage? So you can watch his show, buy his books, root for him against his oppressors in the rest of the press-- and get some news in the bargain. Can we imagine Larry King writing op-eds and giving interviews about his political "enemies?" On the other hand, can we imagine Peter Jennings reading letters from viewers disagreeing with his stance, as O'Reilly does most nights? Posted by: Tim at September 15, 2004 10:18 PM | Permalink I find Heywood's statement an outrage, Rather's condescending and clueless responses an outrage, and CBS's overall handling of this story, including the way they went about verifying the memos, an outrage. So there's your outrage. It also has its comic side, as many have noted. And Tim, in your current campaign to show me up on my own blog as "imbalanced," or two-faced or something, you're getting just a little sloppy. The passage cited credits O'Reilly for doing something Jennings would never do. Did you catch that? Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 15, 2004 10:51 PM | Permalink Doc Searls writes: Blogging isn't cable TV. We don't have to fill otherwise empty pipes with "content," and we don't have to hold eyeballs still while our customers stab them with advertising messages. Most of all, we don't have to join the ranks of the professionally opinionated, or the choirs of voices raised in righteous rage against political enemies. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 15, 2004 10:58 PM | Permalink Jay, I'm lost here. What agenda does a news organization need other than to do news well? That includes making editorial decisions to avoid behaving like a tabloid, and reporting as best they can what actually is in addition to what someone or the other says it is. As for the rest of you liberal bias muttonheads: get over it. Even Scott McClellan says the White House had no reason to believe the documents weren't accurate, which pretty much validates the content if not the provenance. This isn't a case of liberal bias; it's a case of poor story selection compounded by stupidity. Anyway. Jay: I assume you're talking about the idea of making editorial judgements on what issues are important enough to warrant the expenditure of limited resources. Any claims to the contrary, the press do that all the time; the problem is that way too often, both the decisions and the subsequent reporting stink. What am I missing? Posted by: weldon berger at September 15, 2004 10:59 PM | Permalink Jay, I'm not on a campaign to show you up. I don't have the writing skill and would never presume to know more than you do. I also am not out to prove a bias on your part - you've stated your bias transparently. I also left that last sentence in intentionally, for the reason you mention. I considered truncating the quote after "political enemies" as a better parallel with Rather's situation, but it was more informative of the diversity of news personalities and formats if left in. (I'm no defender of O'Reilly and don't watch Fox News Channel - no cable). I also linked to the wrong SBVT essay, it should have been this one. Of course, one of the dangers of argument by link with a snappy sentence or two is being misunderstood. But unless I missed it, that's the first time you've expressed your outrage on this. Is journalism - the subset that includes Dan Rather - a profession or a craft/trade? Is there a difference in handling violations of the sort that CBS News has committed depending on how these professionals/craftsmen see themselves? Posted by: Tim at September 15, 2004 11:18 PM | Permalink Well, Tim. I may well have been too heated. Or extrapolating overmuch, as I often do. I was trying to say that while I can, did, and perhaps will again express my outrage at CBS, I reserve the right to think it ever so slightly outrageous that you do ask me: where is your statement of outrage, Jay, as if I have some obligation to declare myself by a certain time, or to condem Rather for this because I hit someone else for that. I'm not saying you put it that way, but perhaps you'd like to explain... what does Gee, Jay, where's the outrage? mean, and, underneath the words themselves, what is it asking me to do? But what I really want to know is... what significance is there in when I express outrage at Rather and CBS? "Unless I missed it," you wrote, "that's the first time you've expressed your outrage on this." If I were Colin Powell, then it seems to me you have a point. First time outrage expression for a secretary of state is news. I represent no one but my self and my writerly obsessions. My "positions" on things, while they exist, I often choose to de-emphasize in my writing. Yet I see your point. Links and a few sentences, which I recommend as a comment style, leave much room for misreading. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2004 12:24 AM | Permalink Weldon: You ask a good question. What agenda does a news organization need beyond: tell the truth and do a good job? Normally, that is a perfectly fine mission in life. But the American press has worked itself into some strange situations--he said, she said is one--where agendalessness is being taken to harmful extremes. We have what might be called an abuse of neutrality going on. I just wrote about one: editor of the Miami Herald says: No Springsteen, staff, it's a benefit concert and we're the newspaper-- we're neutral. In the case of election coverage, a high stakes game played for keeps by all players, the press gets beat up, led around by the nose, manipulated and abused by all if it doesn't have some demands of its own to make on the players and the process. At a certain point in the 1990s, the national press took on the "ad watch" as a permanent part of political coverage. That became an agenda item: we're the press, we're going to evaluate your claims in those ads. This was a modest addition to the arsenal. But it was pushback, of a type. I think the candidate should lose the traveling press corps if the candidate cannot answer the questions of the traveling press corps. And if I'm an editor in Atlanta, I may pull my person off the plane, especially if I know others are going to. If we win that fight, the candidate will make time to answer questions, and we'll return our reporters. So my question to the hypothetical election team, meeting a year ago, was: how do we post a big public service win in campaign 2004? I admit it's a strange question. That's the whole point in thinking it through. Any clearer? Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2004 12:52 AM | Permalink But what I really want to know is... what significance is there in when I express outrage at Rather and CBS? Well. Hmmm. That's a great question. I'm outraged. I've expressed that outrage to Rather and CBS in emails. And, I'm frustrated. Because I don't think those emails will matter a whit. I guess I wanted to know if you were outraged. I mean, why should you be the calm, collected one in the group? It's not like you're the press critic? Some Department Head at a prestigious journalism school? Why would your expression of outrage carry any more weight than mine? OK, it does. Among the hockey stick curve of influential opinions about journalism, you're a tad closer to the red zone than I am. And it made me feel better to know that you were outraged by this CBS News fiasco, too. My "positions" on things, while they exist, I often choose to de-emphasize in my writing. De-emphasize? Why? That I do not get, at all. Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 1:05 AM | Permalink This may be a bit off topic, but why does everyone write as if 60 minutes had credibility? It has seemed to me to be a biased hit-machine for decades. A very arrogant one. I have seen too many outrageously biased presentation on that show to consider it anything but a propagada machie (getting a bit bitter this week). Although I use less MSM than I used to, I had plenty of years watching 60 minutes lie by trickery. Any gun owner can tell you of some of the fraudulent video clips before the 'assault weapon' ban 10 years ago. But this is the normal behavior of that organization. if you are conservative, you know that 60 minutes lies - not just bias - but lies. I derive some satisfaction from this latest story. First, CBS was out to hit my candidate, dragging up information that miraculously hadn't been found in 1994 and 2000. It is odd to read the detailed discussions of the documents. It is obvious and hsa been for days that the documents were crap. not good enough evidence 9or maybe it is) to bring to court, but far greater than the quality of the information provided by CBS. The issue isn't that CBS got snookered - but that they were immediately ready to believe the informatio. The best candidate for a scam is someone who desperately wants to believe in it. Posted by: John Moore (Useful Fools blog) at September 16, 2004 2:08 AM | Permalink Weldon: You ask a good question. What agenda does a news organization need beyond: tell the truth and do a good job? I really prefer to explain that a news organization's agenda is to provide a useful map of reality. I try to avoid the word "truth" -- it gets philosophers' knickers in a bunch. I've been on the phone already this morning to demand of a candidate a public apology for misappropriating copyrighted material from our newspaper he personally miss-used in a campaign flyer. No more mister nice guy. The press -- and I distinguish the press from all media -- has enjoyed a honeymoon, but it's over, and it has an obligation to reclaim the distinction that CBS muddied. (BTW, bloggers can be press.) I endorse this. It's an extra, conscious decision to adjust the tare on the balance to achieve better discussion and understanding of an issue. [Humorous aside] I was swinging through Belmont Club weblog this morning -- which has an excellent piece on iraqi fatalities, incidentally -- following another article on CBS when I noticed a google ad at the top of his page: IBM Typewriters Only $199 I'll try Jay's recommendation. No soliloquy, just brief statement and link. It is a strange way to present a case, logical argument, or a position. Lileks has descriptions of the difference in perspective of the left and the right on the Bush Guard contretemps (scroll to bottom.) Is the position of a given media outlet apparent in which of these two views is expressed? Which position is expressed most frequently? Is group think exhibited? Posted by: John Lynch at September 16, 2004 10:20 AM | Permalink Continuing, the "press" may not win, but here are indicators that individual bylines may (scroll to "high Q.") Posted by: John Lynch at September 16, 2004 10:56 AM | Permalink ... and as individual voices, bylines, and blogs are heard. The monolithic traditioanl media is fractured (registration to WSJ req'd.) For the good of all. Is this a win? I think so. Posted by: John Lynch at September 16, 2004 11:40 AM | Permalink I have the winning formula! Reboot to the DOS prompt. Then type: "format MSM". Seriously, I fear that the ground beneath MSM has been irretrievably lost, but the Gang of 500 is so engrossed in their real-time and projected future post-morteming that they haven't noticed that its all gone and they're in free-fall. Legacy Media is an awkward phrase for an institution that has, through self-mutation, rendered itself obsolete. The advent of cable television and the freedom of the Internet gave the 500 an unlimited opportunity to primp and preen. Cable yawned before the MSM as an awesome chasm of airspace to be filled, and the simultaneous conglomertization demanded that it be done on the cheap. And what in this wide world is cheaper than talk, talk, talk? Bureaus and in-depth investigations were seen as losers instead of loss leaders. So at the very time the content demand was growing exponentially, MSM was pulling its own intelligence circuits off-line, playing both the Dave Bowman and Hal 9000 roles. The use of pooled video grew, but so did the practice of "anchors" sitting and watching video, stupidly and uninformedly commenting on what we could all see for ourselves. After an awkward time of this kind of stream-of-consciousness self-dialog for mass-consumption, the anchor would turn to a "reporter" and ask, in weak desperation, "What do you think?" And at first, it was if each reporter had been waiting their entire lives for someone to ask, and a new, and essentially identical stream of consciousness would flow. Video played in endless loops. With few "soldiers" on the ground, few grunts to work the stories, the practice devolved into who could get the best pictures the fastest. Self-referencing became more pronounced, as anchors and reporters began to qualify their blather with such tags as, 'we're seeing this for the first time' and 'this is just speculation at this point'. The Internet begat mail lists which begat newsgroups which begat forums which beget blogs. In the beginning, much of it was anonymous and unconnected, and had a seat-of-the-pants bite and charm to it. It was loosey-goosey enough to allow rumor and innuendo, and anonymous enough to bring some of the locker-room banter into the public light. It was about the furthest thing from face-to-face, and because there was no immediate way to make it pay, it was fundamentally derivative, feeding off MSM. It was outsiders commenting on the Gang of 500, and no doubt many in the Gang got their chuckles from it. But having starved its own brain of oxygen, MSM was beginning to stumble and struggle and to repeat itself. It was not as if the drift into a new dark age was a winning sales plan, so something had to fill the space between ads, and MSM increasingly began poaching on the blogs' stakes, mining 2 separate veins. One was the partisan vein. The partisans were only too happy to spoon-feed content to MSM, and to bear much of the cost. Not only did the partisans provide content, they also provided platforms and talking points, told MSM what to show and what to say, and how to think. It is easier and more comforting to an intellectually hamstrung MSM to track a consistent partisan worldview, wherein everything is understood and conformed to mode of thinking, than it is to try and make objective sense of a complex and uncooperative world. The second vein was the kind of "inside baseball", wall-to-wall self analysis, self-congratulating, other-criticizing bloviating that much of the blogsphere had adopted. Sure it was easier for bloggers to link to MSM stories, but linking to each other, and commenting to and on each other, carried and added and self-affirming kick. For MSM, it was a pleasing application of the old fiction writer's adage to write what you know. As MSM dumbed itself down to a bottom line, it knew less and less about geo-politics, etc., but it sure knew itself and sure found itself endlessly fascinating. Its gotten to the point in this election cycle that often, the only way the Kerry campaign can get a coverage sniff is when a talking head indirectly comments on how the campaign is playing to MSM. 9/11 turbo-charged the race to the bottom. Already, in the Bush Administration, you had a cynical approach to the press that was equal parts contempt and kiss-kiss. Paul Westerberg wrote, "The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest. . .And visit their graves on holidays at best . . . The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please,". So Rove threatened and bribed, threatened some more, and as the MSM continued its collapse, Rove worried less and less about getting it right. It has become such a degraded institution that exposed lies are like so many gnats, easily swatted away with charges of liberal bias. The worse it gets, the better it gets for an Administration that takes such a cynical view of the process, and so little values such institutions. In this atmosphere of anxiety, it perfectly suits them if everyone throws up their hands and writes off everyone in MSM, because this Administration can play the Big Fear cards to cut through all the dissatisfaction and distrust. In the wake of 9/11, there was an immediate and wholesale surrender of MSM objectivity which was a damning and critical component in the Grand Iraq Bait-And-Switch. MSM was so swept off its feet over being in bed with the Administration, and so agog over the cool pictures and adrenaline, that it never seriously got around to asking why we were in Iraq in the first place, and what their role should be in reporting it. Its been bad before, but never this bad. Lies have been reported as news before, but never in such an open way. It reminds me of an old movie, a weird artifact from the 'swinging" mid-60's, called "A Guide For the Married Man" wherein a wolf, played by Robert Morse, counsels a faithful but beginning-to-wander husband, played by Walter Mathau, on how to cheat on his wife and get away with it. At one point in the planning session, Morse covers what to do in the event he and his mistress are caught red-handed, "Deny, deny, deny." The film cuts to a scene of Morse getting caught in bed with another woman by his wife. When the wife breaks in, Morse calmly gets out of bed and begins to get dressed, all the time responding to his wife's cries of "How could you!" by repeating, "How could I what? What are you talking about? What girl?" Morse flatly and persistently keeps up his denials while he dresses and ushers his mistress out of the house. His obviously false denials are so out-of-sync with his guilt that his poor wife becomes disoriented and begins to wonder if she's imagined the whole thing. In this dazed state, Morse's words of soothing comfort almost seem like a kindness. Deny, deny, deny. Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at September 16, 2004 2:16 PM | Permalink Mark, Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 16, 2004 3:07 PM | Permalink Mark, In other words, I don't think the pre-Iraq coverage was inconsistent with the information available. If the press is going to flagellate itself over missing that intelligence, it would please me no end, since they already attacked the administration for acting on poor intelligence, to the point of accusing, to this day, the administration of going to war on a lie. Iraq looks transparent today. Before the war, it was a black box from which emerged threats and frequent mangledbodies. Posted by: John Moore at September 16, 2004 3:58 PM | Permalink I'm going to be writing more about this on my blog, but it seems to me that the press is losing right now by not coming down even harder on CBS. As many have noted, "Rathergate" is quite a distraction from many other important issues that are getting very little coverage, in part thanks to Rathergate. At this point, it is a virtual certainty that the documents are of contemporary vintage, even if they are accurate recreations of ealier memos. Even granting that there is a slim chance that the documents are authentic, CBS has not responded to legitimate criticism in any fair matter. Heck, CBS has even cast aspersions on the reporting of "competing" news organizations. Where are the editorial boards of the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribuen, Wall Street Journal? If there are complaints that Rathergate is drowning out other news, might it not be because other serious journalistic institutions have not increased the pressure on CBS to, at the very least, adopt full transparency? This would not include burning the source, of course, but there is a lot more CBS could and should be doing, such as creating a blue ribbon panel of expert document examiners. On the other hand, you have the LA Times, which has said that the worst mistake CBS made was thinking that the National Guard service of Bush was an important issue in the first place. Yeah. It might also help if some of the doyens of j-schools or journalists emeritus were to make their concern and/or outrage public. Jay, I'm not saying there is any expectation that you or your colleagues take on these issues specifically, but such voices might help CBS move forward to resolve the issue. Such voice might help journalism "win" this election, instead of "lose" it (though the score is already being run up against journalism I fear). Posted by: Ernest Miller at September 16, 2004 4:11 PM | Permalink Thanks for that run down of below the surface stuff going on, Mark. I pulled some of it into the Post. When you get to the deny, deny, deny strategy, which I too have noticed (and so have many others though no one has a good vocabulary for it) you need to mix in Alter's observation about "running out the clock" on the press, and ultimately the public. There's something about that tactic. It's trying to tell us something about the press and the most elusive matter there is: human credibility. Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2004 4:50 PM | Permalink I think an important point needs to be made: what if nobody wearing pajamas caught the fraud? CBS would have made a major hit piece on the president, based on fraud, and nobody would know the better. The problem is that MSM members have been doing this for a long time. The only difference here is they got caught. CNN went to conservative leaders once they discovered that they were losing conservative viewers to Fox. The leaders said: "Tell the truth and you'll get conservative viewers." The issue isn't that CBS screwed up with malice aforethought, it's that this time they got caught. Conservatives know that around this time of an election cycle, an MSM outlet will "discover" new information that makes members of the right look bad. It's predictable - an American tradition - to lie about conservative candidates at this phase. This was a great one. Documents over 30 years old conveniently jumped out of a moldy grave and perfectly fit the get-Bush mindset. We can expect backpedaling. The Swifties were dismissed for a couple of discrepancies (some only in the minds of the press). Now the MSM is happy because the Swifties, those upstarts, have been neutralized. Rather will do the same thing. Bush will be wrong,wrong, wrong, evil, coward, daddy's boy, etc. It's going to happens. It is this sort of thing that has caused to reduce their usage of MSM increase their use of samizdat. By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, has anyone checked Rather's (Note: Burkett is a well known investigator of these issues). This Sunday I went to the Vietnam Veterans' rally in DC. Burkett mentioned Rather, and the reaction was almost as bad as if John Kerry had walked on the stage. Posted by: John Moore at September 16, 2004 4:51 PM | Permalink Ernest: I think you have a point about others in the press not coming down hard and demanding more of CBS, in the practical realization that, painful as it may be, there is an industry-wide imperative for greater candor and more investigation. As for Making a Statement...hmmm. That's what I think I am doing when I try to write about Rather and the moment.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2004 5:03 PM | Permalink Rather is Clinton in 1996. He will do whatever it takes to brazen it out. Look at what he's said so far. CBS' pitiful, intelligence-insulting excuses for relying on patently forged documents are just another way of saying they are completely amoral and unrepentent about it, they just wish they hadn't gotten caught. Their "rebuttals" basically establish that they fished for expert opinion that suited them--and it took a few experts before they hit the jackpot. OF COURSE they knew the documents couldn't stand up to scrutiny. What is amazing is that CBS admits as much and calls that a defense of its behavior. Of course, Rather should have been shown the door much earlier--that's what's kind of sad about this whole episode. Jay Do you think that veracity and reduced balance may once again become important to the MSM? I am sure most journalists are hard working folks who are trying to dig out information. I don't want to think that they are going to fade off stage to the left. Do you think the Rather even might help with that? We determined months ago that Journalists tend to have an anti-Bush bias and are happily using that bias to put the news in favor of the challenger. Hopefully that will change. I believe that you approved of the biased state of affairs, but that is part of the cause of the CBS gotcha. In some parts of the country this is not going well. One station in Texas let it be known that it will no longer carry CBS news content unless Rather is fired. The internet certainly allows some fact checking (not to mention frequent media criticism). The bloggers will continue to have that effect. They don't have resources of the MSM, but the MSM doesn't have either the broad geographic distribution nor people with the knowledge of bloggers - ranging from personal and professional work to hobbies in which they have deep experties (take a poll of right wing bloggers vs the MSM on "assault weapons"). How this mixes in should be very interesting. Posted by: John Moore at September 16, 2004 6:45 PM | Permalink Mark J. McPherson, Why is it that every Lefty Bush-basher revises history so Iraq comes immediately after 9/11? Why is that? Why skip Afghanistan and the 2002 campaigns/election? Ernest Miller, I think the source of the documents will be burned. Conventional wisdom seems to be zeroing in on Bill Burkett. The question then becomes provenance and whether CBS knowingly, or through willful negligence, used fraudulent and forged memos to get the discredited Barnes interview and go to air with a political hit-piece. Or, if none of that matters because the ends justify the means - which seems to be the "fake but true" defense. I also find it damning for the state of journalism that Rather, with his discredited documents and interview, acting in the identical manner as Terry McAuliffe and the DNC demanding that Bush answer their accusations anyway and pointing the White House's unwillingness to justify their behavior by engaging in a debate. Did you see what Jeff Jarvis wrote today? I also am struck by the hypocrisy that muckraking/investigative journalists always seem the first to agitate for "official" "independent" "external" investigations into corporate or government actions - but never their own. In fact, journalists demand greater protections from oversight, from being held accountable. Can we discuss this recommendation? If "everything has changed" after 9/11, is this more or less needed? Are bloggers performing this role? A partial solution suggested by Wallace is found in an article written earlier this year by Emerson Stone, himself a former senior CBS News executive. Stone is among a growing number of media practitioners to call for the revival of a concept called that National News Council. The Council, made up of journalists and non-journalists, was devoted to studying complaints lodged against news organizations. Issues of ethics, deception, and libel all came before the Council, which existed from 1971 to 1983. Many news organizations agreed to broadcast any finding that a complaint against them was warranted. Stone (p. 20) makes the point that "any such outside nongovernmental criticism improves broadcast news, with the added benefit of raising the sensitivities of newspeople themselves to what they do."Congressional Hearings, Anyone? (H/T: Instapundit) Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 6:54 PM | Permalink Jay, I would be interested in your thoughts contrasting Dan Gillmor's, "My readers know more than I do." and Doc Searls' comments that both Jeff Jarvis and you have now echoed as a result of reader complaints about Rathergate reticence? How does that fit in the conversation of New Media? How does the functional comment section (and there are many dysfunctional ones) act as a community with the author without threatening the author's ownership and control - as seems to be the feeling expressed by Searls, Jarvis and Rosen? Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 7:25 PM | Permalink Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 8:20 PM | Permalink I don't for a second think the mainstream media's 15-point promise can be kept. I think most in the old media thought they had that kind of power. I think many of them honestly believed they were worth 15 points, that they were incontrovertible, that they could say anything, even, in the case of Laura "Lucky Hat" Blumenfeld, to deny things they'd written that inadvertently made their candidate look ridiculous. That's really the "axe" to borrow your term: the hubris of the Emperors of the Fourth Estate complementing each other on their finery when they're as nakedly partisan as Code Pink. Imagine how this sounds: "We should be focusing on energy production instead of beating up on Enron. Energy production is too important for us to be sidetracked by silly questions about Ken Lay's credibility." Now listen to what you're saying about how the mainstream press needs to get back to reporting real issues. In your version of "we win" discredited journalists "win" when they can figure out how to force-feed fake turkey to the public. In my version of "we win" the news-consuming public wins when we figure out who the fake turkeys are. Posted by: Mister 15 at September 16, 2004 8:31 PM | Permalink Tim, Talk about the media fraudulently pretending to spectator status--that's this administration's defense of its serial negligence and malfeasance. "We just happened to be here in the White House when everything went wrong on security and the economy and the environment and energy policy..." Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 16, 2004 8:31 PM | Permalink National News Council High bench. Robes. Powdered wigs. Parsing nuances. Pontificating. Telling us what "is" is... or ought to be. I thought the world was headed toward "We the people" instead of the Professional Journalist. Remember, Walter Cronkite was once considered exemplary. Why do you want adjudication? Certainty? I just finished re-reading Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" for a library speech. Certainty is what the masses sought. Writing and thought didn't provide it. Why do you want adjudication? Certainty? I don't remember asking for certainty. Adjudication? Is that the we said? Isn't it interesting how the watchdog class consider themselves exempt from accountability? How dare you speak of overseers, of adjudicators of our product - declaring it defective. Not pajama wearers, no, robe wearers, wigs. Unruly commenters. Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 9:52 PM | Permalink One of the things I noticed was the self-congratulatory tone among bloggers about busting this story open without a sense of proportion or meta-narrative - what does that say about the blogosphere and its sense of internal ethics? Posted by: Matt Stoller at September 16, 2004 10:06 PM | Permalink An old girlfriend once accused me of having no sense of meta-narrative--at first I thought she was just spewing jargon but now I realize she was citing a grievous ethical lapse. If only I could go back and do all that stuff over (definitely no hookers this time). Posted by: Tim at September 16, 2004 10:52 PM | Permalink Zipping back to the question how does the press win? By helping readers understand the context in which the country is obliged to operate. Just spent a bit at Belmont Club looking over the details of American deaths in Iraq and their distribution, followed by reading some comments. As an example of what I mean, do you think the press can, even during a campaign, convey the need for patience in Iraq? Patience helps convey the will to persist until stability is reached. Bush vows to persist. Kerry is on the horns of a dilemma because many Democratic voters he needs to win don't believe we should stay, but cutting and running would have profound repercussions. Meanwhile, the press seems unable to map the issue clearly. sbw, Are you in Bush's cabinet? Why would it be your editorial responsibility to explain something the administration itself doesn't have yet? How does advancing poliicy suggestions on your own fit into you insistence to stay out of the news and off the page yourself? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 12:10 AM | Permalink For the pro-Bush, "liberal media" bashers: Check out the new Iraq intelligence estimate. How did so many Bush-hating lefty traitor pessismists get into the US intelligence community? And why is the press, like sbw, printing the fantasy? Why are they ignoring the reality that Bush lies about each time he drags out the partisan liberal press CYA excuse bag for his failure? Why are these partisan disinformation talking points (its just media pessimism) given equal time? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 12:17 AM | Permalink sbw, Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 12:21 AM | Permalink Before we commit planning on election coverage, we need to know: what's a victory for us? As political journalists, this year, at this point in our careers, and at this moment in... how else can we phrase it? History. How can we, who are the press, post a big public service win in a political year, so that when it's all over and we go to Harvard for the post-mortem with our friends in the profession, they ask us... how did you do it? You can't without credibility with your readership. Why do the politicians ignore the national media and deal with local reporters? Is it really the elitist claim that the locals are easier to manipulate? How can you win if you can be shutout at any point in the game? How can you develop a game plan to accomplish something so amorphous as a public service win dealing with public servants trying to win at political sports when you are as despised and distrusted, if not more so, than the politicians? How can you outline a winning game plan with Dan Rather as 2004's headline for the Journalistic Division of the Gang of 500? Posted by: Tim at September 17, 2004 12:32 AM | Permalink That famous lefty pessimist Francis Fukuyama: "The long-term plan laid out by the Bush administration since the June handover of soverieignty in Iraq is straight forward. The interim government of Iyad Allawi is to be strengthened through a continuing build-up of army, civil defence corps and police so it can take over security from US and British forces. Elections will be held next January for delegates to a consituent assembly who will draft a constitution under which regular elections will take place by December 2005. At that point, Iraq will theoretically have a fully democratic and legitimate government and the coalition can begin winding down its presence. Anyone who thinks this scenario will materialise is living in fantasy land." sbw, Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 12:48 AM | Permalink Where Mark Is Mistaken Mark states the press "never seriously questioned" why we were going to war in Iraq. I am not sure how this canard got started or if even those who repeat it believe it, but I would invite them to review the press coverage during the run up to the Iraq war. NPR recently did a study of its own coverage (available on npr.com) in which it found interviews and reports critical of and questioning of a potential invasion of Iraq well outnumbered those that presented an invasion in a positive light. If you review other major outlets, especially the NYT (in which Apple famously declared Iraq a quagmire a few minutes, or maybe days, into the invasion) and which editorialized almost daily againt an invasion, you will find a similar balance of stories: ones criticizing Bush's lack of international support, calling for more time for inspections and so on. Yes, Judith Miller did write of WMD in Iraq but she messed up, honestly if somewhat incompetently. But she was far outnumbered by more skeptical reports in the paper. This was Howell Raines's paper, remember? In any case, virtually every intelligence agency in the world thought Iraq had WMD, including the Clinton Administration, and to think that the press is laying down on the job if it doesn't get the story no national intelligence agency can get...well, that seems to be putting the bar a bit high. In any case, to say, as Mark does, that the press abrogated its responsibility on Iraq is absurd on its face and underneath its face too. One only has to look at the record. That's what the Internet, search engines, et al., are for. Posted by: Lee Kane at September 17, 2004 2:39 AM | Permalink PS. I would be interested to see a study comparing the runup to the Iraq war with other wars in the nation's history. Given the mass media, including Internet, available and the war's extreme controversy and the fact that the war was telegraphed long before it started--leaving plenty of opportunity for discussion--I would not at all be surprised if it turned out to be the most heavily debated and examined war, prior to its begining, since the Revolutionary War itself. And in terms of sheer number of debaters the most debated ever. Posted by: Lee Kane at September 17, 2004 2:45 AM | Permalink Lee, The Clinton reference is a complete red herring. Inspectors went in and destroyed missiles and proved there was no nuclear program operating before the invasion. You are revising history. It is the fall before the invasion when the press kept repeating administration propaganda that Saddam was tied to 9/11 where they fell down on the job. NO INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ON EARTH BELIEVED THIS INCLUDING OUR OWN. Why do propagandists like yourself get away with pretending that inspections never happened? Because the media treats propagandistic falsehoods from the Bush administration as part of their "he said, she said", even when they are demonstrably false. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 7:13 AM | Permalink US journalists HELPED, from 1971 on, the anti-War folk. Those who wanted to choose Peace instead of War. Victory for the press will mean that most press readers understand the (likely) good AND bad points of different policies. The press helped to LOSE some 3 million humans, murdered by commies, because the likely result of "peace" was not reported -- though well known by those willing to fight commies. If "peace" means surrender and genocide, the press needs to report it. Like in Sudan. And Iran. And No. Korea. Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 17, 2004 7:48 AM | Permalink Ben How exactly does counciling patience for the tooth-fairy better inform the American people? I love the way you can take a substantive point and run with it meaninglessly and so far away. The media, the country, and maybe even you -- since you seem unwilling to consider the possibility -- have lost a sense of time and understanding of one's place in it. Such impatience is a vice, not a virtue and is symptomatic of a simplicity of thought that handicaps planning a better future and sticking to it. If I were looking for a representative of that kind of thought, one who comes to mind is Homer Simpson. I repeat my point. Since school curricula do not encourage stretching students' sense of time, it is incumbent on the press to do so. Here's something I wrote some time ago that I thought would help stretch students' sense of time and willingness to persist against difficulty. Ben, even classical giants like Seneca and Montaigne found wisdom in the understanding of others. The opportunity is open for you, too. Ben Where did the canard that "everybody thought they had WMD" get started? Demonstrably? Hmm. Teddy Kennedy heard David Kay's report then and believed it, too. I didn't realize he was in on the canard. The French intelligence service must have been in on it, too... along with those of most of the rest of the world. Ben seems to have discovered a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Wonder why we all missed it. sbw, What makes you think faith in a failing plan would be a good thing for anybody? We agree that in general, patience is a virtue. Your pretense that that was the point of your previous post strikes me as disingenuous. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 8:23 AM | Permalink No sbw, just because you missed it, doesn't mean we all did. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 8:29 AM | Permalink Oct. 2002 March 2003 sbw, inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/they_knew_0802/ Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 8:57 AM | Permalink If you want a fresh perspective on the War on Terror...neither Bush nor Kerry...read this. It'll mess you up: http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2004/helprin.html Posted by: Fred Baumann at September 17, 2004 10:38 AM | Permalink Ben, the question at hand is how to make a win for the press. I'm seriously addressing Jay's question despite your persistent attempts to digress. You write, Again you fail to read the words in my post. That's not accurate. I read them, disagreed with the premises, didn't buy the broad-brush conclusions that take a very long jump, and, as a result, ignored them. No answer is sometimes a good answer. [Making word play] I have little patience with virtues. Bill Bennett and his "Book of Virtues" is no better than teaching how good "two" and "five" are as numbers, when, what students really need is to master the logic of arithmetic. Process counts. Process ties in to what I tried to say earlier. Reiterating my point, our society and thus our press are inexperienced dealing with concepts beyond today and the short memory surrounding it. Sighting down the past, through the present, to the future is a very important skill. It's like looking down a strip of motion picture film. In place of that, the press too often puts a "milestone millstone" around its neck -- day after day celebrating numbers that, while important on an individual basis, take mindshare away from in-depth appreciation about the true lay of the land. It would be sad if John kerry were the best candidate for President and he lost the election because he could not generate confidence among swing voters regarding Iraq, terrorism, an impotent U.N., and the basis for international community. And it would be sad if the press cannot help the candidates climb out of the echo chamber of the media to discuss the dynamics of dealing with those issues. sbw, I share the frustration with the press' inability to establish perspective on time. Time gets compressed to suit the storyline. I thought it was appalling that the press was reporting quagmire in the Iraq invasion *days* into it. Now in the relatively brief period since the invasion (and its immediate aftermath) we are hearing that Iraq is a disaster, and no one is slamming the panic button harder than the press corps. Does anyone think panic-mongering and demand for immediate results will lead to sound policy? But as in the past the press refuses to exercise restraint. They are essentially shaking the camera and pretending there's an earthquake, making it difficult to assess exactly what mistakes are being made and how to fix them (understanding that avoiding all mistakes is not a serious goal). There's the sense that anytime something bad happens the press is going to find some action that was responsible and someone to blame for that action--tracing backwards from bad news to bad person. This seems like a great way to encourage CYA behavior and purpose-defeating dithering (hello, Kerry). sbw and Brian, What has our press coverage got to do with that? It may enable your denial, but it does not improve the situation on the ground in Iraq. If your argument about the timeline is relevant to Jay's question, than mine is too. I am arguing that your timeline and the press's timeline is way too LONG. The press and you are compounding our failure by either supporting policies that ensure more failure in the future or lamely suggesting maybe this sinking ship might have a couple little leaks to patch. Calling for patience with failure is bad policy and even worse, activist journalism in denial. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 1:54 PM | Permalink Brian, What kind of mental gymnastics allows you to be aware of this fact and claim "[the press] is shaking the camera and calling it an earthquake." Has the press infiltrated the National Security Council? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 2:20 PM | Permalink Ben, You continue to be easily distracted and led far away from the center of the discussion by an urge to regurgitate Kerry talking points. You're enthusiasm is wonderful and very civic-minded but I'm afraid I'm not hear to engage in some (very dull) Crossfire-ish sniping over Iraq. Do you have anything to say about the press' work on the Iraq story--starting from the run-up (which they say they failed at) to the actual invasion (which I say they failed at) to the aftermath (IRAQ IS A DISASTER, EVERYONE SAYS SO)? Or are you just scrapping for an argument about it here after making little headway on your message board/echo chamber of origin? In either case I'm going to go back to ignoring you until you can find something to say about the press (note the title of this weblog). Brian, The reality principle IS related to the issue of press coverage, however little interest you may personally have in it. When you accuse the press of failure or partisanship for accurately communicating the view of the President's own national intelligence estimate, something is wrong with this picture of the press. It means you are CREATING a press issue where there isn't one. Thus your previous post communicates your own wishful thinking in the guise of comment on the press. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 2:46 PM | Permalink sbw, Ad hominems are the best you can do here? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 2:51 PM | Permalink Brian, You are making my argument for me. Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 3:12 PM | Permalink Ben, Sorry, not good enough. You either can't comprehend what I write or don't want to. Look at it practically: you're not getting the Crossfire argument you want here, so why not go back to Kos or wherever and regale all your friends with how you showed 'em up on PressThink. It's getting obvious you're not even slightly interested in examining the press so I have to wonder why you stick around, other than for the likely reason that you can't cut it in the big leagues of partisan football. Brian, Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 3:20 PM | Permalink USA Today discusses two presidential campaign polls on the front page today. Gallup gives Bush a thirteen point lead. Pew says the race is tied. This under a headline that says, "Poll: Bush leads." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz' discussion of the same polls comes under,"Which poll is more accurate?" Anyone have insight into how the same two polls get such different leads? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 3:33 PM | Permalink On the slim hope that Ben's serial yorking of OT partisanship hasn't driven everyone in the community off this thread: Tell me who and what we have to defeat in order to prevail. [speaking as a political journalist, which I'm not ...] Ourselves. Our own structural biases and our instincts at gotcha journalism, our narcissism, and our ambition to gain recognition by destroying the lives and reputations of others. Our smugness and giddiness at being able to dramatize and sensationalize complex, tedious and serious stories. Until we defeat our own demons, we will continue to be defeated by those we try to demonize. Until we hold ourselves and each other to the same, or higher, standards that we demand from the objects of our stories - and those standards may be unrealistic all around - we can never win the trust of our readers born of our own credibility. CBS anchor Dan Rather on Wednesday conceded there were questions about the authenticity of the documents, but challenged Bush to answer questions about his Guard service. White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded by saying, "It is always best for journalists to stick to reporting the facts and not try to dispense campaign advice."Tell me what our campaign coverage agenda should be. And tell me why our cause is just. how about a bias toward accuracy, facts, truth, fairnesss, and the sweet light of reason? ok then, I wonder if "approach" == "bias" (because bias _is_ how you approach your study of the outside world) - in which case - In their writing, reporters should apply the Clinton test for fairness. In cases where a little bit of research will clarify who's telling the truth, they should do it (e.g. SF Chronicle crowd estimates). In other words, inject more science (Richard Feynman: "Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.") into reporting, and be willing to report results you didn't expect. The paper should make clear - online, at least, where space is cheap - what its structural biases are, by what standards it measures its reporting, and what its management & reporters believe are the most important things to inform their readers about. (if we don't agree with their approach, we can go read or make something else; if we do agree, we have standards to hold them to. But at least we'll know.) Even if not in the article itself, there should be an Analysis section where the reporter (or another otherwise-impartial observer, i.e. not someone with financial, political or personal ties) can clarify what seems to be going on. (or, if ties exist, at least clarify what they are.) In short, the desired bias is an explicitly acknowledged bias, coupled with a willingness to subject one's preconceptions and prejudices to test (thus ensuring accuracy, facts, truth, fairnesss, and the sweet light of reason) To which I would add, let the politicians set the agenda of public service topics and report them to the republic's citizens. Then analyze the benefits, risks and losses of the issues being debated and those not being discussed. Don't panic or prognosticate the end of the republic, as so many are wont to do (think AWB expiration). Counsel long-term thinking and planning over short term emotional highs and lows. Write with your beginning paragraphs grounded in historical context and transition that backward pointing arrow through the present triumphalism or defeatism to the longer term view of the goal and competing trends. sbw wrote: Reiterating my point, our society and thus our press are inexperienced dealing with concepts beyond today and the short memory surrounding it. Sighting down the past, through the present, to the future is a very important skill. It's like looking down a strip of motion picture film.Can we, as political journalists measure failures against successes within a context that critically recognizes our own inability to know what is happening, what the outcome will be, and then be fully prepared to admit the error of human endeavor on our own part and likewise others? Can we embrace capitalism and republicanism in such a way that recognizes its imperfections and reminds, if necessary admonishes, candidates and readers for becoming too selfish or too communistic. And, can we maintain our own perspective during the beguiling and disorienting campaign season without becoming detached, above, nowhere, no longer indivisible from those we write for? Posted by: Tim at September 17, 2004 5:50 PM | Permalink The Left coaster has an interesting discussion of the enormous gap between voter turnout in the last three presidential elections and the Gallup poll sampling model that oversamples Republicans by perhaps five percent and undersamples Democrats by six percent. This directly connects to the latest poll results on Wisconsin as well. Does anyone have an explanation for what might justify this construction of the sample? theleftcoaster.com/archives/002806.html Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 5:53 PM | Permalink Tim The very concept of 'we' in the press is the long-term structural problem. The press and the general media have a function, actually several functions. Nowhere in these functions is there a 'we.' The conveying of voices, which would not otherwise be heard. The expression of the multiplicity of voices of our society. The conducting of public dialog. The celebration of our differences. The audit of the outrageous. The revelation of things new. The mourning of things lost. Each of the various voices, opinions, and viewpoints require no 'we.' When there is ‘we,’ there is a stifling of views, a repression of voices, and a groupthink instead of an audit. The 'we' should remain at the level of standards in integrity, not in viewpoint, nor in unanimity of desired social 'victories." If it requires that a new rank (blogs, Fox, talk radio) of media emerge, so be it. If it instead requires that ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, LAT, B GLB, etc. begin to diverge in their advocated meta-narrative positions, so be it. In the world of small business (which may individually get lucky and be successful,) the multiplicity adds up to more than the sum of the parts. So to it should be in the collective media. The cacophony of voices allows no one party to 'set the agenda,' to 'determine coverage,' or to unduly 'influence the election.' The win of the media is that the collective allowed, facilitated, conducted, and stayed out of the way of public discourse. If the media, as a collective (or substantial part thereof,) take a position, then they are not providing what the public trust excuses their flaws in order for them to provide. Posted by: John Lynch at September 17, 2004 8:28 PM | Permalink Ben, I don't expect you to comprehend this but . . . you're only serving to firm up support for Bush with your display. Jay Rosen, I'll tell you what I want and expect from you. A news conference. One announcing how outrageous the conduct of CBS and Dan Rather is and what an absolute stain it is on the craft of Journalism. When I entered school at the University of Florida, it was with J-School in mind. I did in fact enter the program but soon left -- it was a great program but quite time consuming and really focused on the craft. I wanted to study more of the world. I think I made a good decision. I'm still a news junkie, though, and I am disgusted with CBS. But I'm more disgusted with the J-School deans (yes, I mean this -- these people are usually substantial figures within Journalism circles in their state) and the editorial boards of major newspapers around the country. Like someone said above, WHERE THE HELL IS THE OUTRAGE??? This action by CBS should be publicly condemned. How hard is that? This isn't some garden-variety stunt at CBS but all of you guys seem to be treating it as something close to garden-variety stuff that comes with the territory. Amazing. Posted by: RattlerGator at September 17, 2004 8:54 PM | Permalink I think it would be great to introduce this elegiac, long term view sbw and Tim discuss to press coverage of the economy. Then as part of the business news we could talk about what business decisions mean for the environment, for the general standard of living, for the future of the country, for the future of a sustainable economy, for the status of the US economy in the global economy and actually debate them rather than just have them handed to us by CEOs. Ultimately this would require introducing some democracy to the corporation as well as the media. It would require thinking about the impact of longer and longer working hours for more and more people and the way this further reduces the potential for society wide debate and participation, the way these economic imperatives directly undermine the public sphere. Perhaps this could create more pressure to shift resources to alternative fuels, lower the strategic imperative for mischief in the middle east, raise the possibility of taking longer term goals and consequences into account in our economic policy making, rather than simply the next quarter's earnings as if that was the whole story. There certainly is a poverty of long term thinking from the press when it comes to business and the economy that I would for one would appreciate improvement in. John, Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 17, 2004 9:01 PM | Permalink Group hug and positive reinforcement for Ben. I enjoyed reading that last post and learned from it. Continuing on with the main theme, as long as we are about creating a campaign win for the press and the people, lets consider two further changes of mind: 1) During a campaign there is no score. Polls are just a game and a campaign is not a contest one side wins or loses when an election is held. Certainly someone takes office after the election, but that is a battle, not the war. Winning the war capturing the ongoing understanding and support for core principles that drive a political party. [That ought to free up a ton of front page and 11:00 o'clock news space.] 2) For people and the press, school is always in session. That is about the same thing as saying that there is no such thing as an adult. We are -- or ought to be -- continuous learners. [That should trip up the 'I'm correct and he's not crowd' who will have to learn to integrate the valid observations from all sides into a common framework more people want to buy in to.] Ben, I would enjoy, and do in some periodical magazines, a journalistic view that facilitates such discussions. John, I think there is truth in your concern with "we" but I wonder if this post from Jarvis interests you? Posted by: Tim at September 17, 2004 10:11 PM | Permalink Tim I wonder if this post from Jarvis interests you? I had just printed it and highlighted portions for my high school journalism teacher wife when I read your pointer to it. It's sweeping. A first pass describing the impending revolution. It is worth noting that Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, has created brand identification -- trust. But also remember Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom -- Whuffie. Dan Rather has discovered how quickly whuffie and a brand can be lost. Also recall that bundling is a time-saver. Hmm... "Economical bundling with Trust"... isn't that a newspaper? Hmm... "Economical bundling with Trust"... isn't that a newspaper? Or a portal with RSS feeds from trusted "bylines" by topic? Posted by: Tim at September 18, 2004 12:14 AM | Permalink sbw and Tim, For anyone who's interested: They say Creative Response Concepts, the PR firm for SBVT, financed consultations with several expert typographers, which they then provided to their client, Cybercast News Service. Together with the Media Research Center, the three of them were involved in breaking the story into the mainstream. Many of you are much more familiar than I am with the Republican blogosphere side of this story. Is this an important story? I would think we are probably kidding ourselves if we don't assume PR firms are part of the mix in most of what we take for grassroots responses to political events in the US from either side. How might this affect our view of the blogosphere and its independence from the mainstream media? Have the party machines feeding material to the networks simply begun to shift toward feeding material to the blogs because it gets more grassroots street cred? I'm certain the CBS story didn't require party direction to get started, but surely this is an issue we need to start thinking about. The story also goes on to note that Doubleday has retained Ein Communications to defend the Kitty Kelley book. www.prweek.com/news_storyfre.cfm?ID=222586dsite=3 Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 18, 2004 1:08 AM | Permalink They announcement basically pissed off a whole slew of the bloggers who worked the story carefully and consider themselves independent thinkers. I could provide dozen angry rebuttals, but here is one explaining that they had developed the story significantly, hours before the Cybercast News Service published: Instapundit has an apology from the PR firm, which screwed up big time: Is it important? Sure it is. It shows that anyone can jump into the news game. However, one tiny article does not Rathergate make - I doubt one in a hundred followers of Rathergate consider the Cybercast News a key element of the developing story. Rathergate became important because of the hard work of dozens of bloggers and, then, BM reporters. It would never have gotten off the ground if the questions and concerns being raised weren't credible and important. Posted by: Ernest Miller at September 18, 2004 1:20 AM | Permalink In 1990 D. Patrick Miller wrote a piece in The Sun called "Toward a Journalism of consciousness." In it he wrote about how, with investigative journalism, the reporter sometimes needs to gain, then betray, the trust of his sources, always for a greater good — a story the world needs to hear. Early in my own career I did an investigative report on rural poverty that led me to the same conclusion: that we sometimes employ dishonest or morally compromising means to serve what we believe to be honest and morally justifiable ends. However we put it, rationalization is involved. Such is also often the case with the Gotcha! game. Yeah, we win, but what, besides the exposed butts of those whose pants we pull down? In some cases, big things, sure. In others, not much. Posted by: Tim at September 18, 2004 8:34 PM | Permalink "I, Dan": The Second Coming Of "Fake But Accurate" Posted by: Tim at September 18, 2004 8:58 PM | Permalink Tim, I'm impressed with the testimony of Killian's secretary. Doesn't she have to be a very important source for any conclusion about Killian, memos, and Bush? Posted by: Ben Franklin at September 19, 2004 1:51 PM | Permalink Ben, The fact that CBS is incompetent doesn't mean the gaps in Bush's record go away. Agree. Discovering fake memos doesn't mean real ones don't or didn't exist. I agree with that also. Just as I disagreed with writing off 250+ Swift Boat Vietnam veterans as all liars and discounting EVERYTHING they said, I disagree with using this dishonest, partisan, political attack and CBS' complicity as a way to hide or disguise the distinction between Bush's first 4 years and last 2 years in the TexANG. As I said elsewhere, I think the press should either have full access to both men's military records, or neither. I support the press using the FOIA and their resources to develop an accurate and realistic narrative of each man's service. There are about five different official reports on Bush's failures to report that are required by regulationi and are missing from his file. Actually, the AP named five categories: We're missing records from Kerry's file as well. And yes, the Guard was notoriously poorer record keepers than the active duty units. Personally, I think the Democrats are being very foolish spending time, resources and media access on this issue. The difference in the campaign is that from January to July Kerry has been running on his service, running away from his anti-war activities (while still a Naval Reserve LT), and attacking Bush's service. Then in August, he's outraged when the other band of brothers made up of decorated veterans, from enlisted to admirals, his subordinate(s), peers and superiors, question his own characterization of his service over the years. See my reply to Matt Stoller on CBS, The Left and Bush's National Guard service I'm impressed with the testimony of Killian's secretary. Doesn't she have to be a very important source for any conclusion about Killian, memos, and Bush? I think her recollections, and partisanship, needs to be considered alongside Staudt's, Hodges', Killian's son and widow, Martin's, Udell's and Strong's. Of those, I think Strong's is the least informative or compelling. Posted by: Tim at September 19, 2004 8:36 PM | Permalink |
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