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October 31, 2004
The Coming Apart of An Ordered World: Bloggers Notebook, Election Eve"About the performance of journalists in 2004 it will be asked, post-election: How good a job did the press do? But Big Journalism was in a different situation in politics and the world during this campaign. The post-mortems should be about that. Also: will the press even have this job in 08?"The election of 2004 will always stand out for me for the reasons people say it’s extra important. The campaign of 2004 will always stand out because I blogged it. That changed politics for me. I used to consume with a certain intensity the campaign narrative produced by others. Now I help make it— in the sense that PressThink is a little part of the big, roaring national dialogue about who would make a better choice for president, and why. By doing this weblog, I crossed over to the participants’ side in campaigning for president, and journalizing about it. I’m one of millions who felt something similar happen in ‘04. They crossed over to participant status. Of course, this is always going on in politics— people getting involved, people dropping out. The question is whether, during the long Campaign of 2004, there were new kinds of participants in presidential politics, new entry points for their talents. And whether politics is vulnerable to their ideas. The Note made the point Friday: compared to that force known as the voters, the press is a pop gun. “You’re just along for the ride, boys and girls,” said the tip sheet written by Mark Halperin and his elves at ABC News. The boys and girls are also called the Gang of 500— the reporters, editors, producers and pundits who have given us what they alone could have given us in political coverage this year. And I wasn’t surprised at this from The Note on Friday morning: “number of must reads in Friday’s papers: sadly/happily, none.” No one in the Gang could think of anything vital to say. I think this is basically good. The closer we get to the voters taking over, the less meaning there is in any campaign news. We understand about as much as we’re going to understand of these two candidates, of “the race.” I can barely absorb the results of another poll. The numbers bounce off me. I believe none of them. All year long, I have waited for one honest and detailed article from the press about the percentage of people who hang up the phone when a pollster calls. Zogby, Sir: how many? Gallup, what’s your number? New York Times/CBS poll: please disclose. (Do you know? E-mail me.) I’ve heard it’s the nightmare number in the industry. Joe Klein of Time and CNN hints around about it. I just want to know what the number is—a percentage—for the big polling operations. Added to those who can’t be found because cell phones are all they use (which has been reported in the press) the hang-up number could really mean something. Correction: could have meant something. Too late now. The time for that journalism to be done is over. (Well, there’s this.) And it is very fortunate for CBS that Bill Keller of the New York Times decided that the missing explosives story couldn’t wait until Sunday’s Sixty Minutes. By Sunday night the voters have begun their roar. Unless you have emergency information, your pop gun should stay holstered. And I have barely the will to point out that in Saturday’s paper, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times said, “At this point in a campaign, command of the political agenda is critical,” and in the same article said that at this point in the campaign, “the contest is less about swaying undecided voters than about getting supporters to the polls,” two statements that appear to mean opposite things. I figured out what bothered me about Nagourney’s reporting this year. Some who admire the New York Times pay attention to the titles given to people there; and to us it means something, as surely the editors meant something, when Najourney is designated the lead correspondent in election coverage at the Times. Like.. this is your best guy! Your star player. Many others play crucial roles, it’s team coverage and all that, but still: in the world of correspondents, shouldn’t the “lead” ones be leaders? It seems to me impossible for Nagourney to have set any kind of standard of excellence this year because the reporting he was assigned to do was horse race journalism— most of the time. He wrote the insider baseball news. The big poll-driven, consultant-quoting “analysis” pieces from inside the campaigns. What a waste. Richard Berke, the Washington editor in charge, used that approach in 2000, when he was the lead correspondent. He then passed along the insider’s beat to Nagourney, who seems like a fine journalist and a good guy. But the beat is brain dead. Why give it to your top gun? Berke’s decision is one of the reasons the Washington Post moved far ahead of its rival in political coverage this year. Then there are the calls I have been getting from journalists—including the editor of a sizable newspaper in a swing state—who want to talk about the war against journalists they feel is being conducted by the Bush side. I have been writing about it here and there. Last week I was quoted thusly in Jim Rutenberg’s account in the New York Times: “The traditional players, including the press, have lost some of the control or exclusive control they used to have,” said Jay Rosen, chairman of the journalism department at New York University, who keeps his own Web log, or blog. I did say that. And I believe every word. Though nothing has occupied me more than figuring out this campaign to de-certify and discredit the press, I have not succeeded yet. I don’t fully understand it— yet. Voices from the other side of the political divide are eager to help me: “Journalists have discredited themselves,” they’ll say, “by being so biased.” It’s payback time. We don’t have to take it anymore. We can route around them. And I understand all that. But every journalist who has called me has said the same thing: “this is something else.” They describe a step-up in attacks. They speak of a deluge of complaints that appear organized, not in a clumsy, but in a strategic way. They talk of hatred spewing at them and their staffs for being biased against Bush, for allegedly hating the President. They speak of callers who won’t relent, or allow you to speak a word. They scream about your blatant pro-Kerry tilt and then hang up without waiting for any answer. My callers want me to know about this. Maybe they want me to keep writing about it. I’m not sure. But that sentence they spoke in common, “this is something else…” had emotion in it. A good novelist could describe fully what it was. There was a measure of fear. Some pain. Some awe, too. Seeking for explanations, one could say these calls from alarmed journalists were just describing the standard details of dirty politics—a known instrument—now pointed at the press, which is treated like any other opponent. And I think that is part of the story. But there is more. Only one piece of campaign journalism stood wholly apart from all others for me, as the author of PressThink and an interpreter of politics. It’s Without a Doubt by Ron Suskind in the Oct. 17 New York Times, my choice for the high point in political journalism this year. I contributed my bit to the narrative line he develops: “Bush’s intolerance of doubters.” It was this post, (April 25) attempting to explain what’s different about the Bush White House’s approach to the press. There is still a reporters gallery, and it is still speaking the language of a Fourth Estate. But perhaps its weakness is in speaking a language Americans recognize as theirs. Bush is challenging the press: you don’t speak to the nation, or for it, or with it. My choice for “press piece” of the year is Michelle Cottle’s analysis in the Nov. 8th issue of The New Republic, one of the few works by a journalist that offers any fresh insight into the bias wars. (The link is subscribers only.) Cottle takes a psychological approach, showing how the relationship between Democrats and the press differs from the relationship Republicans have established. The connection with the Democrats is essentially neurotic; with the Republicans things are cooler and more rational: Democrats say (with some exasperation) that their party still accepts the idea of the media as an unofficial Fourth Estate of government, shaping debate and serving as watchdog for the public interest. As campaign consultant Kenneth Baer put it, “Democrats buy into this high and mighty role that the press has of itself.” Because of this, say Dems, their team is too “susceptible to guilt” over denying access. She includes a couple of interesting quotes from Democratic operative and former Gore aide Carter Eskew. “In a way, that’s healthier,” says Eskew about the Republican attitude. “If you know what the boundaries are, you can have a professional relationship and just say, ‘Let’s not pretend to be friends.’” And: “When Democrats don’t do well, I think the media’s contempt factor really goes up,” says Eskew. “They think, ‘God, your campaign is so lame. How could you be losing to this guy?’” This is what the Right wing does not get: the contempt factor for Democrats among political journalists, which involves the need to separate from those you feel closest to. Neuroses, a hidden factor in the bias wars, is not so hidden after Cottle’s outstanding piece. About the performance of journalists in 2004 it will be asked, post-election: How good a job did the press do? But Big Journalism was in a different situation in politics and the world during this campaign. The post-mortems should be about that. Also: will the press even have this job in 08? About the situation the journalism profession finds itself in, I still feel there is too much to say— too many changes and disruptions. We understand very little of it. Much more will be mapped out after the election drama is over, and there’s a chance to step back. Maybe now, in the final days of our ignorance about who the next President will be, there are a few things that will never be clearer.
Go ahead, add to my list. I invite you. (I dare you.) What, to you, are the clearest lessons for the press in political year 2004? What’s murky beyond measure? Tell us now, before we know too much. After Matter: Notes, reactions and links… If the source had gone on the record, this would be PressThink’s passage of the year in political journalism. Ron Suskind (New York Times Magazine Oct. 17, 2004): …then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. See Jeff Shalet on the Suskind article and the “magical realism” of George W. Bush. Jeff Jarvis takes to task Todd Purdum of the New York Times for his “incredibly condescending, insulting, snotty analysis of the dirty, rancorous campaign we’ve had: He says that all the vile bile must be OK because voter registration is high.” In short: Mud amuses the masses. Well, Mr. High-fallutin’ Journalist, could it be instead that voter registration is high because citizens actually care about what is happening in our country and there are crucial issues to care about — even if big media concentrated instead on the mud? Apparently not. Do not miss Doug McGill’s groundbreaking essay at PressThink: The Fading Mystique of an Objective Press. It’s about the coming apart of an ordered world. The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Hitt: (Oct. 28, 2004) Republicans, who have long argued that they are treated unfairly by the mainstream media, are airing complaints — and using them to galvanize their base — as Election Day draws near…. Broadcasting and Cable—a trade magazine—produces a rare hard-hitting editorial: News in the Spin Cycle.
Posted by Jay Rosen at October 31, 2004 1:22 AM
Comments
Relatively new visitor to your blog, Mr. Rosen. But my hat's off to you....I keep coming back. I don't mean to be unkind or brutal to our political press, but I think that fundamental lesson for the political press in America, on both sides and also in the middle, is simply that YOU FAILED. The press has failed us in this election, pure and simple. Honestly, for me, one of the main reasons why Jon Stewart is perhaps the most reliable political commentator in 2004 is that he went on "Crossfire" and he said so, flat-out, in no uncertain terms. Not as an arrogant pundit, but as a frankly rather humble and cowed citizen. He said, with all humility (I think), "Please stop. Please give us more substance. We need your help." This failure, I think, is largely about objectivity, which has been a topic writ large in your recent posts and recent comments. There are deep nuances to the failure of this journalistic standard, undoubtedly, but I think the main thing that the news-reading public perceives is that even when viewed objectively, some statements made by candidates or public officials are untrue. Objectively. The facts, the public record, contradict what we hear every day from the folks who may run our country for the next four years. And our objective press won't go that far, won't objectively call foul when it's been committed. Such calls may have partisan consequences--liars generally look bad when they've been called out on it--but that doesn't mean that one can't objectively call a public official out on their untruths or misstatements. Cases in point: 1) Dick Cheney saying in the debate with Edwards that he'd never gone so far as to imply that Saddam Hussein was complicit in the planes flying into the Trade Center in 2001. He's on the public record, implying (or flat-out saying) exactly that. Objective fact is that he said it. The political press doesn't call him on it when he issues a patently false denial. 2) The ongoing Bush administration song-and-dance about Al QaQaa and the missing explosives. They haven't addressed that at all, even after American news embed videos show the barrels of explosives and our own soldiers snipping the IAEA seals. Which makes it pretty close to an objective fact that that stuff was there when our troops first arrived. But the political press doesn't call the administration on its obfuscations of videotaped evidence. 3) The fact that neither candidate's numbers add up, given the spending plans they are proposing for the next four years. It's widely accepted by partisan and nonpartisan economists that both Kerry's and Bush's claims that they can cut the defecit in half are so much manure. But the political press doesn't ask either one any substantive hard questions about this. I could go on and on, but I won't. And I will state at this point, in case it wasn't already evident, that I am myself rather partisan--I'll be voting for Kerry--but while my examples above may be overloaded on questions for the Bush administration, the same goes for the Democratic challenger. It's the "He-said-she-said" paradigm, and it's essential that the issue be addressed for candidates from both sides of the aisle. Other countries manage to produce principled and balanced journalism....why can't we in America go beyond the basic reporting of what people in public life say? If you don't go beyond that, it performs no useful function anymore for the general populace--the papers are only printing snippets of what any of us could find in full online. As I say, I lean to the left, and nevertheless, I've maintained a subscription to a British conservative publication, "The Economist" for the last four years. Partly because I get news from them that one never even hears about here, but mainly because I respect their treatment of issues, even when I disagree with them (as, often, I do). They have praised Bush and Blair incessantly for their decision to invade Iraq, but they have also been duly critical of the conduct of the war itself. They endorsed Bush in 2000, but have consistently lambasted him for his protectionist stances on farming and steel (free trade is one of that publication's hot buttons). One reads their articles, and one can't discern between a "news" article and an "op-ed" piece, not because they're rabid about anything, but because they're frank about their assumptions and thorough in their reporting. None of these exemplary qualities seem to exist in the American media, especially the political press, in 2004. It's not objectivity to fail to call bullsh*t when you see it....it's cowardice. To come full circle, that's why Jon Stewart is held in such high regard--because he actually skewers the people who deserve skewering, not on a partisan basis but simply on the basis of what they say on the public record and what they do. It's all out there, and all of us who pay any attention see it everyday, and Mr. Stewart has a plethora of easy targets. In fact, he's shooting fish in a barrel, and nobody outside of the "Fake news" is bothering to do that business. Cheers, Posted by: Dano at October 31, 2004 3:49 AM | Permalink 1) The press needs to increase responsitivity to new information. Hard to do, but necessary especially to correct mistakes or give a bigger picture of the issue. Perhaps they need to incorporate the speed of the Internet into their models. Speed is really a nasty double-edged predicament though, isn't it? 2) 4th Estate is more than just the press, but it's interaction with people. Local papers feel more need to interact, but larger papers sometimes (necessarily) lose a bit of touch with the populace. That's still no excuse to lose complete touch. 3) Bloggers are holding feet to the fire of journalists for mistakes. The threats are uncalled for, but from what I see, the most respected bloggers don't actually call for the demise of the 4th Estate so much as a revaluation of the stories told. A lot of the criticism I see online is quite legitimate or at least brings up questions worth engaging. (Like how Judith Miller wrote her Kerry fluff pieces) 4) Just because vitriol comes from both sides on the same article doesn't mean it's accurate. Pissing people from both sides off doesn't mean the press has done a good job (paging Okrent here!). It could just mean the article was crap. "This is something else" isn't really an adequate response to the vitriol considering that one of the biggest causes of that vitriol has its own roots in the way news is reported by the media. I'd say more, but I need to take a step back to think more about the question of what's murky (lots) and what the press can learn (lots). Posted by: Steve at October 31, 2004 4:36 AM | Permalink Dano, well said. I suspect that the reasons journalists don't routinely call foul on objectively incorrect statements include: ignorance, not wanting to offend/lose future access, seeing themselves as part of the power structure/gatekeepers vs providers of a critical service and a perception that it is better to be first than accurate. Whatever happened to who,what,when,where and why? Another point I'd offer is how the press to seems to be led. For example, where are the articles about immigration, social securtiy, et al. If politicians don't talk about something, does that mean it's not worth coverage? The press seems to accept the Bush/Kerry defintion of the world. Agree with Jay on the inside baseball metaphor. Many of us could care less, but it seems to enthrall many in the press. I look to the press to provide facts, not truth. While I don't share your politics, I agree that the press has failed in this campaign. Why is the press/TV news so afraid to call Bush or Kerry on their BS? Is it that the press has the same Achilles heel? Posted by: tom at October 31, 2004 5:09 AM | Permalink Jay, In Political Year 2004 I need high quality information about the prosecution of War in Iraq to decide who to give my vote. The press does not provide a good or reliable intelligence apparatus for the American citizenry in a time of war. This was what I took away from your topic ‘How the press should have changed after 9/11’. Fellow citizens are dieing in Iraq and I end up at an Iraqi bloggers website looking for insight? Vive the blogosphere but why does that seem wrong to me? Why am I not getting what I want from the press in Political Year 2004? The press succeeded in establishing a continuous and coherent narrative that says ‘more soldiers died today’. But the press creates a stream of temporally and spatially disjointed stories without historical context to support that continuous narrative. Continuity of a particular story and historical context is absent. Citizens suffer in ignorance because they don’t have the information and dialogue necessary to formulate their own interpretation of events. The press in Political Year 2004 is a simulcast that does not support real dialogue and understanding of a tragic policy – the press delivers gloss. The press must deliver more and better information about 'events on the ground' despite the fog of war. The very real ascendancy of the blogosphere this year makes this very clear. The paucity of information from the press is stupefying. I want real intelligence. I want to be awash in information like trending GDP, trending millions of barrels of oil, count of functioning city councils, percentage of successful/failed missions and much more concerning Iraq. I want real dialogue with Iraqi’s. I want to hear the soldiers without someone else’s interpretation. I want translated transcripts of city council meetings. I expect more. coop Posted by: coop at October 31, 2004 6:23 AM | Permalink Hey Jay -- Early in the post you asked: Posted by: David Akin at October 31, 2004 7:34 AM | Permalink Objectivity. It keeps coming up in the conversation as a problem, not an ideal. Imagine that reporters and the press could actually truly be objective. Would we be having this conversation now? Would the press and MSM be the subject of all this agita and angst and criticism? Maybe not. But the press cannot be objective in a true sense. It never has been and it never will be. So why is this such a problem now, when it wasn’t in the past? I think that for a long time, when the press and the MSM were the only people with access to power and the resources to put out news and shape the narrative, they told people they were objective and people believed them. Actually, people had no real opportunity to question this stated objectivity, at least not in any way that would allow for a broad conversation. The press controlled the means to disseminate the information, to frame the questions and offer the answers. It controlled what was considered objective truth because the press said it was objective truth. People individually might question, but there was no way for groups of people to share skepticisms about the objectivity of the press and the news and information it put forth as objective truth. But the internet, in particular, has stripped some of the power to put forth information to many people from the press and MSM and given it to individuals. As Jay says, “All around the scene in politics, in media, and in matters of interpretation, we find fallen barriers to entry.” Now if the press were truly objective and offering real objective truth, then people would be getting together over special interests, or over policies to change the way things are. But instead, people are getting together to point out the lack of objective truth in the press, and they’re quite right in their observations. Moreover, I think many people feel duped—they believed it when the press said it was objective, and now they find out the press was no such thing. The press, meanwhile, suddenly finds that the basis for its power to shape the narrative and affect the present and future is under attack. And instead of trying to understand the attack and adapt, it is digging in. That’s a bad idea. I also think this has a lot of do with the idea of professionalism in journalism. In the case of most professions, the professionals share a technical knowledge that is gained from specialized education in the techniques and skills of the field. It is a knowledge that cannot simply be picked up on the street, but requires concentrated, careful study and practice. Professions often have shared protocols and practices that are learned and refined, and can be observed by those outside the profession and that reinforce the specialized knowledge and work of the profession. Think medicine, law, police work, orchestral music, for example. I don’t see this kind of professionalism in journalism. And I think that’s also part of why the press is under fire. That’s enough for now. Posted by: dr. cookie at October 31, 2004 9:45 AM | Permalink Thanks everyone for these thoughtful comments. David: That's not exactly the number, although it is interesting that Stewart asked it. How many do you have to call? includes people who aren't home. But the pollsters can claim they call back to find those people; and therefore they adjust to keep their sample accurate. But if you are home, and answer, and then hang up when you hear it's a pollster, then there really is no way to adjust. That's the nightmare, because it may introduce massive unreliability. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 31, 2004 9:50 AM | Permalink A major lesson for the press, and one we've touched on extensively, is that "he said, she said" isn't going to work anymore for helping readers find out what's really going on. I have an essay on this toward the end of the last thread. I suspect I finished it right as this thread went up, and I doubt people saw it. Money quote: "As long as politicians are willing to admit things they’d rather not admit, [things that go against their bias] “he said, she said” works, at least at a minimum level, for finding reality. He said she misstated the budget deficit; she said she was using the projected numbers, and his numbers were in fact the current ones; and he agrees that that is the case, or at least lets silence indicate his assent. [Because of the consensus between politicians who would like each other to be utterly and completely wrong, we can be confident that what they agree upon is true]...Unfortunately, it takes two to build consensus. Going back to the last sentence of the previous paragraph, if, knowing she says her numbers are projected, he continues to maintain that her numbers are wrong, there is no consensus. When politicians refuse to play the consensus game, this model [he said, she said] cannot find reality." Posted by: ErikaEM at October 31, 2004 9:56 AM | Permalink I think you're right Erika about this: "When politicians refuse to play the consensus game, this model [he said, she said] cannot find reality." Another way to say it is: The press in its newswriting formula has encouraged politicians to engage in the endless dispute of facts, but the press has also been prevented by its own codes from settling those disputes. Thus, the pressure on "he said, she said," which as a model of truth-telling finally cracked this year. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 31, 2004 10:01 AM | Permalink Posted by: John Bigsby at October 31, 2004 10:43 AM | Permalink That would be the companion to the Suskind piece. Posted by: John Bigsby at October 31, 2004 10:52 AM | Permalink Newbie here, rushing in where angels and experts fear to tread... Prof. Rosen, your April 25 article--the one where you quoted this: "And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that." is what made your site compelling for me. The dynamo quote from the Ron Suskind article just confirms this contempt. What does it mean in a democracy (a system of government that requires a well-informed electorate) when the party in charge has no respect for the institutions that inform the electorate? Another essay that struck me was the one when you described the complicity of the media in the news cycle. I paraphrase badly--you said when the media report on eg, the beheading of the hostage in Iraq, it fulfills the goal of the terrorist--to desseminate terror. Therefore the media can't be "objective" or just report the facts. They are participants in the system. Because they have failed to recognize their participation and evaluate the motive behind certain news stories, the media can be accused 1) of "entertaining" rather than informing or educating, and 2) pandering to the easy story. There will be lots of lessons for the media as they figure out a new paradigm. As a consumer of media, I would hope the media will learn that Posted by: PTate in MN at October 31, 2004 12:50 PM | Permalink The media landscape will continue to evolve - tectonic shifts may be the better metaphor - between now and 2008. By then we'll have more and better established partisan media outlets on the left (to match right-wing talk radio and TV) following the example of AirAmerica Radio. Blogs will be even more important (even if the "blog" buzz-word fades) especially those that have already developed into large communities (The Daily Kos) with tens of thousands of people investigating, publishing, discussing. Even more people will look to the Internet for news and background info in the 2008 campaign. In the face of this competition, mainstream media will have to find a way to keep their audiences loyal. I suspect some (especially the cable TV networks that still pay lip service to "objective" journalism) will do this either by definitively aligning with one or another partisan movement (like Fox) while the big daily newspapers will (due in part to the way they've looked like fools and dupes since 9-11) embrace a rigorous, "speak truth to Power" role that emphasizes investigative reporting and strenuous fact-checking - that's how they can differentiate themselves from partisan media and use their resources (staff and money) to do the kind of projects that bloggers can't do. Posted by: Doug Millison at October 31, 2004 12:58 PM | Permalink About the performance of journalists in 2004 it will be asked, post-election: How good a job did the press do? But Big Journalism was in a different situation in politics and the world during this campaign. As I've come to understand the external pressures the press has come under there are two areas, perhaps inter-related, I am trying to understand: 1. Where is the press going? Is the future path a reasonable and perhaps "good" evolution of the role that distributors of information play in society? Comments have spoken of Gutenberg and/or Luther moment. Is the press facing a reformation? Or, is the press as BIG MEDIA ailing, dying, becoming extinct in the face of competitive forces from new technologies and a political environment? How different is this turmoil from the 1920s, 40s, 60s? One of the most basic questions about themselves that the press seems reluctant to answer, fatally I think, is whether they are professionals practicing a scientific endeavor that can be held to measurable standards and liability -- OR -- they are craftsmen and artists creating with reckless abandon something that is part history, part movie script, part prophecy, and none of that, but constitutionally protected in any form. For me, I would either like the press to either sh*t or get off the pot on the professional/scientist perception of themselves. 2. How did the press get to this point? Was this a mystical fall from grace? Did modernity (or postmodernity) pass by an institution whose structural bias could adapt and keep up? Is the press the victim of its own ignorance, undermined in a "war" it didn't know how to fight, or realize it should be defending against? Did the press undermine its own credibility by becoming a commodity instead of a service? Commodities are especially vulnerable to market forces, fashion fads and packaging for quick digestion and disposability. On of the smartest paragraphs (and there are others) in Jeff Sharlet's Our Magical President is: Suskind and other Bush detractors (and make no mistake, Suskind’s story is a hit piece -- a smart, informative hit piece, but a hit piece all the same) document Bush’s tautological thinking, but they fall short of taking it seriously. That’s a point Mark McKinnon, one of Bush’s media advisors, tries to hammer home in brutal fashion when he tells Suskind, “ ‘When you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what [Bush supporters] don’t like? They don’t like you!’”But what Jeff misses, like so many journalists with an amnesiac narrative window, is it's not just Bush. This isn't a phenomenon born mature in a couple of years. It has a lineage, a genre. It traces its roots back thru the Clinton administration and his critics. It has its own mythology among the press tribe from decades past. It was not fathered by Agnew, although some find comfort in the consensus of like-minded peers by saying so. The press seems to have an identity crisis. They want to find a way back to Walter Cronkite and Howard Cosell, but fear those days are long gone. Swept away like Ozzie and Harriet by newsmakers and readers unwilling to share a fantasy of an esteemed press corps. That's the reality testing that our society is facing, again. There is the reality we want, the reality we work for, the reality we face and the reality we ignore. Within each of these realities are perils, pitfalls, progress and protagonists. And across all these realities is the power of an individual and force of a consensus. In other words, little has changed since Lippman and Dewey. Posted by: Tim at October 31, 2004 2:18 PM | Permalink Jay: Another way to say it is: The press in its newswriting formula has encouraged politicians to engage in the endless dispute of facts, but the press has also been prevented by its own codes from settling those disputes. Other formulas adding to the non-communicative relationship between press and politicians might be the "stiffed-ya/gotcha" and shut-you-out. The press is also unable to get straight answers or pry access. The press can be ignored, lied to, talked around and quibbled with. It's just part of the horse race. With this amount of lost credibility, the only tool left is anonymous sourcing. Posted by: Tim at October 31, 2004 2:52 PM | Permalink Digressing a bit from the main thesis here, sorry. "What does it mean in a democracy...when the party in charge has no respect for the institutions that inform the electorate?" Including the institution of science. From Deltoid (after documenting an illustrative case): "The [company] executives thought that the truth of something did not matter to the scientists - you could get them to say something just by lobbying them. This attitude seems common to promoters of 'sound science'. They seem to think that real scientists aren’t interested in finding out what is true or false but instead just concoct results to advance a political agenda or get more funding. In other words, they think real scientists operate like they do." (most likely found via Chris Mooney's blog on politics and journalism of science) Posted by: Anna at October 31, 2004 2:56 PM | Permalink Jay, Thank you for another thoughtful post. Two years ago, I chose to examine events in the media through the lens of a cultural shift (postmodernism). It's the "this is something else" of which you write, for nothing like it has ever happened before. It's being felt on a deep and fearful level throughout every institution in the west. The press is simply the most visible example, because it's something everybody deals with day in and day out. I disagree with anyone who suggests there is human manipulation behind all of this. Postmodernism is simply the fruit of modernism, just as modernism was the fruit of premodernism. I believe, therefore I understand. Joe Trippi says (and I agree) that if information is power, then the Internet is empowering people. People armed with knowledge heretofore "protected" beyond the locked doors of institutional modernism are dangerous to those institutions. Can you feel the power shift? I can. While everybody's scrambling to "figure it out" or find a way to protect their fatted calf, the change just keeps on comin'. Want a reflective moment? Go and read the lyrics to Dylan's "Times they are a-changin." It's the culture, stupid! And rather than all this weeping and gnashing of teeth trying to figure out what happened (and label it, as modernism requires), we should be talking about our roles in a postmodern culture. Chaos is not the enemy of reason. It's its fruit. Terry Posted by: Terry Heaton at October 31, 2004 4:55 PM | Permalink Two quotes that I wanted to toss in the mix as additions to comments by gavin_rose in the previous thread and Anna, above. They are not earth shattering, just a way of introducing an author with wise old adages: Medieval Global Warming: "In most fields of science, researchers who express the most self-doubt and who understate their conclusions are the ones that are most respected. Scientists regard with disdain those who play their conclusions to the press." Posted by: Tim at October 31, 2004 9:37 PM | Permalink Jay, one small question - why do you believe people hanging up on pollsters is a nightmare, "massive unreliability", etc.? Why is it such a big deal? It seems to me just one more factor, and an extremely obvious one at that - a basic surveying issue is only being able to count those who respond. In election polling, it should be well-understood. Oh - regarding the idea that "Gatekeepers who can keep information out of circulation no longer exist" - Don't confuse the existence of a huge right-wing rant-machine, with lack of gatekeepers. Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at October 31, 2004 9:45 PM | Permalink Am not sure if this fits but why do so many Americans seem today to so distrust the press. I would think if you could answer this question then it would go a long way in addressing the other issues being presented. Posted by: Joe at October 31, 2004 10:00 PM | Permalink Seth: The hang up rate is a nightmare for the industry, not necessarily for the rest of us-- the public. Why? Because it threatens the reliability of every product that industry has. It's also a test for journalism. It's clear why pollsters would want to keep it quiet, but the press would not have a good excuse. I don't think it's a major thing-- except for those who live off polls. For them it is. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 31, 2004 10:20 PM | Permalink Jay Rosen wrote: this campaign to de-certify and discredit the press, Wait a minute. There has been a history of different campaigns. The press has discredited itself. Victims of the press challenged the press. Liberals reacted when challenged on what they believed was their turf... See: "De-certify and discredit?" Intellectual laziness has reduced the voices of the "Gang of 500" to two, maybe three voices. While some of the rhetoricians are more artful than others are, and therefore pleasing to those of us that enjoy demonstrations of well-reasoned, well-written pieces – the multiplicity of voices is missing. The dialog has also gone. Both the readers and those being covered - or not covered - have noticed it. The current administration finds it less than useful to engage the press, because they cannot. A question for the 500: Is it the administration's fault that the press cannot be meaningfully engaged? The readers find little or no dialog, or progress in the national dialog, just "he said, she said." Has this trend been going on longer than just the most recent incarnation of the administration? Blogs, while so deserving of contempt by those that know the finer points of the art, have helped fill this – perhaps original – purpose: the meaningful portrayal of a multitude of voices, and the progression of national dialog. This campaign has heightened national dialog, perhaps in spite of the media becoming participants instead of observers contributing to meaningful dialog for the good of the nation. The reverberations and reconciliations that come of strongly held beliefs will take months to sort out. This too will occur with, or without, the press. Posted by: John Lynch at October 31, 2004 10:57 PM | Permalink Jay, did you get the photo I sent you of the graffiti on the newsstands? Seth, I think I know what you're asking, pardon me if this answer isn't what you were looking for... Presumably the people who respond are different than the people who hang up. Having a high non-response rate means that the pollsters' samples are made of people who aren't like the majority of the population in at least one crucial way. In order for statisticians to draw conclusions about the larger population, their samples have to be representative of the larger population. A high non-response rate makes it more likely that the polls are inaccurate, which is a nightmare for pollsters trying to sell their product. Posted by: ErikaEM at October 31, 2004 11:21 PM | Permalink I was not aware that people on the right are raising hell with letters and calls. As a righty who is in touch with many, I don't know of any campaign per se. However, I can explain the phenomenon from the standpoint of a conservative. It comes back to bias, of course, as annoying as that narrative is. The basic problem is that we see press bias on almost a daily basis. Some of it is extreme (New York Times, Rathergate) but all of it is disturbing. We see it in many areas, not just political candidates: gun rights, abortion, etc. Sometimes the bias is combined with invincible ignorance (the so-called assault weapons debate, where numerous media outfits portray these weapons as fully automatic). Your basic conservative feels angry about the perceived unfairness, and powerless about being able to change it. We believe that press bias is worth a lot of points in the popular vote - especially this year where the Democratic candidate is so undistinguished, so far left (most liberal in the senate), and so flawed (the Swift Boat people were NOT lying, but the press chose a bizarre way to evaluate their claims, and the press never came close to investigating Kerry while going silly over Bush's National Guard record). If John Kerry gets elected, it will be press bias and nothing else that puts him over the top. We look at that, the attempted October surprises, and lots of other examples I won't bore you with, and conclude that the press is a negative force in our society, because it strongly sides with our political or ideological opponents. When you add to that the fact that conservatives have felt this way for a long time (which is one reason many listen to conservative talk radio), it can get pretty emotional. Yes, we would like to fix the problem. If that involved destroying existing news media outlets, we wouldn't shed a tear. But what we want is the mythical "objective journalism" and we'd like the current journalists to at least try for it. We are not afraid to compete on an even playing field, but right now we feel handicapped seriously by bias. Personally, if I could push a button and make the New York Times turn into a cookbook publisher instead of newspapers, I would. CBS - ditto. Posted by: John Moore at October 31, 2004 11:48 PM | Permalink Stephen. There is nothing in the statement, "there's a campaign to discredit the press" that precludes your statement-- the press has discredited itself. Wouldn't the two go together? Why would you pose them as alternatives? Or is it your view that there is we have seen no such campaign, in any meaningful form where we could discuss the rise of it? You find no evidence of it, perhaps? (There are many here who would say the same, and have...) These are the questions I yet have after reading your superb piece, which I urge everyone to absorb. See sbw's: De-certify and discredit? Very interesting indeed. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 1, 2004 12:14 AM | Permalink John Moore: "But what we want is the mythical 'objective journalism' and we'd like the current journalists to at least try for it." I think you put your finger right on it, John. That is what you want. That's where the whole debate becomes interesting again. You side with traditionalists in the press in keeping journalism's basic creed intact. Conservative, too, in thinking that journalists pretty much have their creed right-- be objective, be neutral, stay out of it, tell the truth from no one's point of view, invest in nothing, partner with no one, adopt no particular world view, be a member of no tribe, and so on. And I find it fascinating that you demand it and call it "mythical" too. Doug McGill kind of agrees that it's mythical. What did you think of his essay? The Fading Mystique of an Objective Press. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 1, 2004 12:27 AM | Permalink In response to John Moore's post, the problem for the press is that EVERY partisan group feels the press is biased against their candidate. Liberals raise hue and cry about the ANTI-liberal bias of the press, as shown by the fact (that poor word gets so abused) that most "liberals" in the media are actually moderates, and the really progressive ideas are left out. Likewise, they point to Fox and Rush Limbaugh. In terms of news content, many feel the media gave too much credibility to the "Swift Boat Liars" (that's a direct quote) who were directly contradicted by the facts, while giving the president a pass on ducking out of service himself. I don't bring these up in order to get into a debate about what's right; I think that's fruitless. Instead, my point is that "objectivity" is often nothing more than a code word for "things I agree with." When the media reports something I "know" is not true, or stresses a theme I "know" is wrong, they are biased. People rarely stop to consider that what they "know" to be true might be wrong. I see massive confusion between fact and opinion on all levels of discourse. On top to that, people are generally blind to their own biases. As an example, I'd like to challenge people to find a piece of reporting that they believe is biased TOWARD their own side. It's remarkably difficult. Posted by: ErikaEM at November 1, 2004 1:05 AM | Permalink Jay, You recognize that the press is kidding itself with a surreal fantasy concerning what and how they go about their business AND their paranoia is justified because there is a clearly organized campaign to bring down the old model of the fourth estate as legitimately being able to oppose the Republican party (which likes to imagine it is identical with patriotism per se) regarding anything. It is writing like yours that is willing to broach the complexity without reducing it to the gameplan of one side or the other that is new to this this election cycle. Bush had denied he ever said he wasn't concerned with Osama bin Laden and then they played the money quote where he flatly said it. I saw similar stuff with Kerry and even the Cheney quote Dano refers to. THESE are the facts that non MSM employees and Daily Show fans are sick of not seeing on the news. My question is why don't bald-faced lies get this treatment everyday of the year? Why do we have to wait for a presidential debate a couple of weeks before an election for the press to bother itself over whether our presidential candidates are flatly contradicting themselves and lying to us with a straight face? Is 363 days of lies and two days of busting liars more fair and balanced? Better for advertising? An effect of the view from nowhere? What is it? Simple reality checks like juxtaposing relevant video when politicians or businessmen talk out their ass EVERYDAY would hugely improve the public discourse of this country and surely at least slow down our slide into relativist authoritarianism. Maybe that's why they call Jon Stewart's show the Daily Show. They do it every day. We don't have to wait for holidays to see the relevant stuff from the archives. The Jeff Jarvis piece you link to is so symptomatic. It has precisely the same infantile playground punk quality we've come to know and love in Bill O'Reilly. Did these guys grow up together, or is it just that they were abused by their fathers in a similar way? Do their followers share a similar history of family abuse? What explains their having ratings and viewers? Your point about press contempt for Democratic candidates is spot on. There is no other explanation for the psychotic and childish lies the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal consitently printed about Gore. 90% manufactured by the press corps itself. How could he? The other new angle on the campaign was Media Matters and Air America where Democrats decided they were going to stand up to the bully. I think it has gone a long way to showing up what blowhard authoritarians are running the FOX/Sinclair media axis. Why has it taken this long to develop a database of the systematic American Enterprise Institute disinformation the Limbaugh/O'Really/Hannity types programmatically spew. Air America's relation to the Progressive Research Institute and Media Matters fairly mirrors AEI's role with Limbaugh/FOX/Ailes, etc. The sooner that symmetry sinks in the clearer the air will be. The other thing this cycle shows us is that not even the defection of thinking Republican opinion leaders from the Bush distortion of true conservatism (like Kristol in the Weekly Standard or George Will or Robert Novak) can put a dent in the infallibility the faithful attribute to our misguided smirker in chief. That is scary and new. That says we've gone past politics to something quasi-religious. That's where the "reality-based" vs. "faith-based" angle comes in. The faith-based charge is most relevant to the administration's insistence on fighting based on what we knew was manufactured intelligence at the time. It was faith in what their disinformers were doing, not faith in an alternative reality. The "faith-based" issue applies to those who give credence to the disinformation, their followers, not our leaders. And of course, those who want to make our founding fathers out to be 20th C. fundamentalists. "Deism, thy name is secular humanism (Satan)!" We need a religiously informed press that can appreciate that not all Christians are authoritarian fundamentalists, who don't buy the whole fundamentalist strategy as the point of departure for coverage of religious issues. The Republican/Catholic hatchet jobs on Kerry in oblivious disregard of the other party's divergence from church dogma were pretty well covered by Atrios. Would that he weren't such a lonely voice in the media wilderness. Journalism on religious topics has a LONG LONG way to go. Keep up the good work! Posted by: Ben Franklin at November 1, 2004 1:23 AM | Permalink Jay: Stephen. There is nothing in the statement, "there's a campaign to discredit the press" that precludes your statement-- the press has discredited itself. Wouldn't the two go together? Why would you pose them as alternatives? I wrote quickly, and apologize for my ambiguity. My concern was not to identify a singular "who" was running a campaign (be it the press itself or an outsider). My concern was that for one to look for one single campaign risks overlooking that there have been so many. Jay: Or is it your view that there is we have seen no such campaign, in any meaningful form where we could discuss the rise of it? You find no evidence of it, perhaps? Again. The problem to avoid is the search for "it", when "them", the plural, is the proper pronoun. If we try to find one campaign to discuss the rise of it, we will have editorially overlooked the others and misrepresented the case out of over-simplicity -- adding no more to understanding than has the current vitriolic left-bashing/right-bashing, where each clutches its own portion of the evidence. The Right is not aware of the neurotic relationship between Dems and the press? Jay, speak for yourself. I've personally observed it for over two decades. It's usually raised in camouflaged form when certain Leftists want to claim the press is actually biased in favor of the Right. Why is it you don't think the Right is aware of this relationship? We're just too dumb and unsophisticated to grasp such subtleties? Not at all, Brian-- and that's a unnecessary cheap shot. The reason I said it ("This is what the Right wing does not get") is that anyone aware of this neurotic relationship between Democrats and the press would realize that if often causes journalists to be rougher on Democrats, as in the case of Al Gore in 2000. That's the point Cottle is making. By since it is axiomatic on the Right that the liberal press "helps" Democrats, the point has to be denied. It contradicts the Right's religion. And it is denied. All the time. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 1, 2004 9:17 AM | Permalink Jay, this is such a great conversation. Thank you. I spent 15 years as a journalist, before leaving to get a doctorate in educational research and public policy (and I'm still working on it). So this is discussion is near and dear. But I don't think that the crisis in the press is about the election. The campaign coverage is just a catalyst that shed light on the press crisis. It started even before the campaign, withe NY Times/Jayson Blair situation, for example. I think I know when the press took a wrong turn. It was in the late 1990s. I was the editor of a small magazine, and I was shipped off to various seminars to try to understand how to put the publication on the web. The highly-paid consultants, editors who had "embraced" the web and took our money to tell us about it, enthused about how online publishing would create tons of new jobs for editors. The editors were critical to online journalism because "all those web users will need people to sort out the information and tell them what's important." That was the press party line at the time--that the internet would be another medium under the control of MSM, and that using their special filter of objective truth, editors and journalists would sort out the news and facts for the rest of us, and tell us what we needed to know. What's funny is that the internet turned out to be anything but a place where news, facts, and opinions are controlled by the MSM. Instead, it's the new town square, with plenty of soapboxes and pamphleteering. Perhaps a more perfect medium for democracy and the marketplace of ideas (although I am skeptical about who is in the marketplace--I suspect there are a fewer waitresses and auto workers on these blogs than lawyers, academics, and management). The closeness of the presidential race, the vastly differing world views of the candidates--these would have been around anyway. What's different is that lots and lots of people refused to swallow the MSM narrative, and instead jumped into the internet with their own voices. If it wasn't the presidential race, it would have been something else. The journalists--especially the editors, I suspect--are startled that regular people (voters, citizens) have jumped into the world of information gathering and dissemination with vigor. It will be interesting to see what happens in the year after the election. Posted by: dr. cookie at November 1, 2004 9:33 AM | Permalink I find the comments interesting. Would anyone like to address that without reading the name or even knowing who most of you are, I feel it is easy to pick out who is a Democrat and who is a Republican. As a consumer of news, I feel the news media has failed in giving me the facts needed to cast an informed vote tomorrow. I have seen little balance in the press about what has been accomplished in Iraq or even why Iraq is important today or may be important in the future. If the key issue of this election is in fact security then why do I feel the way I do? Posted by: Joe at November 1, 2004 9:36 AM | Permalink Jay, I've reread your comment and don't believe I understand it -- probably in part because of my unwillingness to subscribe to TNR to read Cottle's piece. Do you suppose you could take another pass at explaining this using different words? Thanks. It's interesting because the term "follow the money" applies so aptly to MSM. There's the issue of what kind of news sells advertising, and what kind of news attracts readers. Perhaps this has been a primary cause in the leftist slant in news reporting (other than the makeup of journalists). Posted by: Steve at November 1, 2004 9:54 AM | Permalink A pointer to Instapundit referencing a quote of the New York Post editorial: If President Bush is re-elected tomorrow, the victory will have come despite the best efforts of two erstwhile American journalistic icons — the Grey Lady of Times Square and Edward R. Murrow's Tiffany Network: The New York Times and CBS News. If nothing else, the notion that "objectivity" animates America's media elite has been exposed this year for what it truly is — at best, a quaint myth; at worst, a pernicious lie. . . . To be sure, CBS and the Times are hardly alone in skewing their coverage for Kerry and against Bush. As The Hotline, the widely read online campaign newsletter, reported Friday: "By any measure, the free media is overwhelmingly in Kerry's favor today." But those two news outlets have stood out as the worst offenders. --- Steve: Sullivan notes how Reynolds has started to cherry pick his facts on Iraq lately which I've noted as well. That's a reach. Dr. Cookie, But when I really want to know what's going on -- for example, to find news -- I have found no alternative to the MSM. Have you? If the MSM did not exist, someone would have to invent them, and that probably would happen online. Posted by: David Crisp at November 1, 2004 10:30 AM | Permalink Jay wrote: By since it is axiomatic on the Right that the liberal press "helps" Democrats, the point has to be denied. It contradicts the Right's religion. And it is denied. All the time. Jay, you could not be more wrong or blinded by your own bias on this point. The axiom is that the liberal press is naturally dismissive if not antagonistic toward the Right. The right absolutely recognizes the neurosis of the press toward the Left as one might notice the reactions of the other side's bleachers when their team fumbles the ball. It is not ignored, or overlooked, or denied - it is fabled. Like the fabled neurosis of the Left toward the military ("Those are our jets now!") the Democrat-voting liberal majority of the press must deal with the reality that "Those are our politicians!" when covering Democrats. Whether they're cheering their team on or calling for the head of a player or coach, doesn't change the accuracy of the axiom. But let's not obsess over the Right's war on liberal media and Agnew's role in it. ;-) ------- One of the easter eggs of PressThink are updates to the After... section. From B&C's News in the Spin Cycle (very cool of you): "None of the journalists actually in the room found anything unusual to report about the speech. But none of the journalists outside the room could ignore the sound bite as it echoed through endless news cycles, growing like a tall tale with each telling." Dean made the unforgivable mistake of speaking to Section 1, forgetting he co-occupied Section 2 and TV gladly made him pay - egged on by Dean's opponents (Right and Left). The Convention in Section View Level One, at the bottom, is the convention floor, assigned to the delegates, who are seated by states. (It crawls with journalists too, and those who have passes.)But that only addresses the geography of the playing field in spatial dimensions. Jay wrote: Because it is time that our journalists learned how to tell proper time, and bring the priorities of their business into better alignment with common sense, civic experience, and an enlarged historical sense. To which I enthusiastically agreed. The press is discrediting itself. Are the other "estates" in our democracy pointing it out? Are they trying to drive up the press' negatives? You bet. Does it come from Labor Unions and Corporate Headquarters? Environmental and Energy lobbyists? Politicians on the Left, Right and ignored fringe? You bet. Blogs and letters to the editor? Them too. The poor dear little darlings.... Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2004 10:41 AM | Permalink I appreciate Jay Rosen for the intelligence and deeply inquiring nature of this weblog. A righty by temperament, I started to really distrust MSM when C-Span showed me raw Newt Gingrich press conferences, and MSM reports seemed to be sourced from another planet. I could actually compare the ingredients with the cooked dish, and it wasn't palatable. I recently had occasion to think a little bit more about these issues when I was invited to give a talk to undergraduate journalism students about blogs and their impact on the existing structure of public information, primarily MSM. The fascination to many of us as Rathergate unfolded was: Whoah??! How long have they been playing fast-and-loose like this? The in-class justification of Rather: "The memos were fakes, but Dan Rather had to go ahead because of his deadline." No discussion was permitted of the stonewalling that followed from CBS. In general, that's all I want to say in public. Anyone interested in discussing such a small sample of journalism education can certainly e-mail me. Posted by: Blogging lawyer at November 1, 2004 11:04 AM | Permalink John Moore writes above: Your basic conservative feels angry about the perceived unfairness, and powerless about being able to change it. We believe that press bias is worth a lot of points in the popular vote.... Yes, we would like to fix the problem. If that involved destroying existing news media outlets, we wouldn't shed a tear. We have a cultural problem here. Viewers/readers are uncomfortable with confrontation -- so the press doesn't do it. That, however, would be the way to resolve who's objectively right or wrong. We have an example right here on Prof. Rosen's blog. In the recent Too Much Reality: Is There Such a Thing? discussion, Stephen Waters (sbw) conveyed by means of an ambiguous comment that the PIPA report was somehow biased. One of the PIPA report's main findings is the following -- and it's certainly very relevant to this discussion of objectivity: In recent months the American public has been presented reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq survey group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), concluding that before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them. Nonetheless, 72% of Bush supporters continued to hold to the view that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Only 26% of Kerry supporters hold such beliefs. sbw commented: "Before you get carried away with the PIPA Report, the phrasing of the questions was directive. Different questions would have led elsewhere." He was asked to elaborate. His response was unintelligible, at least to me. Others commenters also made clear they felt the PIPA report unfair in some way. However, I and others cannot see any basis for their point of view. Here is the heart of the disease: even after a discussion directly addresses an issue, people on both sides walk away with their original prejudices intact and unchanged. Everyone's "reality" remains safe. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 1, 2004 12:17 PM | Permalink Jay, Again, you seem to think that someone on the Right is incapable of holding two thoughts at once: 1) that the press is made up of individuals whose politics skew markedly to the Left and which skew shows up in their reporting and its underlying assumptions, and 2) the press sees the Democratic Party as "our team" and therefore has a very entangled relationship with it which sometimes (not "often") causes it to agonize in a way it never would with Republican candidates (and even *within* Democratic Party factions, see Bill Bradley vs. Al Gore). In short we are quite capable of noticing that when the press bashes a Democrat it is involving itself in an internecine struggle. The press can be conflicted just as a Democratic partisan can be conflicted (see Kerry haters for Kerry). The point does NOT have to be denied--unless you assume that people on the Right are simpletons. The failings of the press only accidentally, unintentionally benefit conservatives, now and again. They routinely benefit liberals. I fail to see the contradiction. Again, this is not rocket science. It does not require mental gymnastics to explain the occasional criticism Democrats come in for. I know the press would love to talk more about that neurotic relationship, because that means talking more about itself and less about those bothersome conservatives...unhappily when it talks about itself it is usually only nonsense that comes out of its mouth. Stephen: Here's some more from Cottle's piece: At this point, even Democrats acknowledge that the opposition is more adept at media management. "Democrats are less disciplined," says former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan (echoing others). "We're chattier, less discreet, more prone to sending advice and tough love to the campaigns through the press." Every operative and journalist has at least one theory about why this is: Democrats are inherently less hierarchical. Republicans have more respect for authority. Democrats never punish anyone for blabbing. Republicans have a more corporate mindset. When a presidential candidate lacks a trusted team, as did the past couple of Dems, the campaign is run by hired guns whose first concern is advancing their own careers--which, folks from both parties note, typically requires ingratiating yourself with the political media. That is part of what I meant. And Tim: I don't buy it. If the Right "absolutely" recognizes this dynamic, then it should stop saying that Democrats and liberals benefit from a mostly Democratic-voting, liberal-leaning press. People on the right should stop arguing that liberal bias in the press "helps" the Democrats. As often as not, the Democrats are hurt more by this neurotic element in political coverage-- and by other reactions from the Gang of 500. There's a cultural affinity between journalists and Democrats that is not there between most journalists and most Republicans. People in the press might deny that. I don't. I disagree that, overall, it works to the advantage of the Democratic Party. I'm sorry, Tim, but it is an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. Democrats benefit from the liberal media, people on the Right believe. What purpose is served by disputing that I do not see. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 1, 2004 1:01 PM | Permalink Jay, I'm sorry, Tim, but it is an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. No, I think it is an article of faith on the Right that the policies and ideas of Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals -- BUT -- the press can be put on the defensive and kept aware of their neurosis so that the press is not helpful to Democrats (paralysis), or even unhelpful (dukkha). Working the refs or working the fans is a PSYOP: Identifying your target's proclivities and then manipulating their decisions/actions because they have such proclivities. Gore and Dean were belittled as caricatures. The press loves caricatures, but is it more effective via mass media against the Left or Right? Is it funny but harmless one way, and introspective and insinuating another? Both sides do this, but they do it in different ways because the media leans (per issue). This isn't much different than the methods used in the 60s against the still conservative press from the 50s. For example, I may be skeptical of calls for greater voice in the liberal leaning press by a liberal leaning press critic because it may be a less-than-subtle call for open liberal/progressive propaganda. Uriel Wittenberg, I have avoided the PIPA survey debate earlier, but this may be useful: WMD: In 1997, UNSCOM recovered more than a dozen 155 mm artillery rounds Muthanna State Establishment containing approximately 49 litres of mustard gas agent that was still of high quality — 97 per cent purity (UNMOVIC pdf, para. 119, p. 30, here) and at Ukhaydir Ammunition Storage Depot (CIA report here). Many politicians and experts that were advocating continued sanctions and continued inspections said Saddam was hiding WMD and maintaining some scale of programs based on this find. Many others said that it was not a smoking gun, but meant that Iraq was not fully cooperating. Still others complained that sanctions should be lifted and inspections transitioned to monitoring regardless of finding some left over Mustard-filled shells. We bombed Iraq in 1998: Desert Fox. In January 2003, Blix said: Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance -- not even today -- of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. February 27, 2003, just weeks before the war started, when Blix was asked whether there was any evidence that Iraq wanted to disarm, he said, "I do not think I can say there is evidence of a fundamental decision, but there is some evidence of some increased activity." In 2004, ISG found recovered 53 CW munitions, including a sulfer-mustard artillery shell, 10 trace mustard shells and a couple of sarin munitions. (Vol. 3, Annex F) Did Iraq have WMD? OK, yes and no. Yes, but I wouldn't have gone to war over what we've found. The PIPA survey is informative, albeit flawed. Could I conduct a similar survey asking if Iraq and Osama bin Laden had connections to Sudan's aspirin factory, if Iraq had connections with terrorist groups, if Iraqi intelligence and government officials met with Osama bin Laden and AQ members, if Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora when we attacked with our Afghan allies in December 2001? Sure I could. Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2004 2:05 PM | Permalink There's a cultural affinity between journalists and Democrats that is not there between most journalists and most Republicans. People in the press might deny that. I don't. I disagree that, overall, it works to the advantage of the Democratic Party. Sorry, are you saying that having a revolving door between Democratic Party activism and television and print jouanalism offers no net advantage to the Party? This is an incredible statement, in every sense of that term. You are I believe greatly overstating the effect of very occasional critical coverage and using it to nullify a pervasive political and philisophical sharing of assumptions. For example, the assumption is that if there is a problem the government is the likely solution, be it jobs, health care, trade, crime, etc. etc. etc. This is part of the very thesis that the Kerry campaign relies on--Bush somehow "lost jobs", because that is what presidents and governments do, they create jobs then give them to the people as gifts, or they lose them in the garage somewhere. Jobs are like gifts from the angels. This is the Kerry thesis and it is seldom challenged by the press, most reporters don't see what there is to challenge, it's common sense that the president creates jobs with his plan, unless he is stupid or incompetent and then he loses them with his no-plan. It is in the words of Ross Perot just sad to point to the odd Democratic candidate who irritates the press for one silly reason or another and then say this sectarian bitching obviously balances out having virtually every newsroom in the country assume that liberal political principles are basically correct and that conservative political principles are the result of inbreeding, rural life, or simply not having sufficient brains. The liberal proclivities of reporters hurt...liberals! It's amazing the things one is encouraged to believe. Tim, You're evading the point, which was the PIPA survey's purported unfairness. The PIPA report states that "reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq survey group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), conclud[e] that before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them." Do we have a problem with this? You speak of mustard gas. Is that relevant? Politicians said stuff before the war. Is that relevant? Iraq was bad; it was hiding things (other than WMD); it wasn't cooperating with inspections; it had nefarious intentions. Is that relevant? >Did Iraq have WMD? OK, yes and no. No, not "yes and no." Just "no." To quote the Duelfer report's key findings: "Iraq's WMD capability ... was essentially destroyed in 1991." >The PIPA survey is informative, albeit flawed. What is the flaw? That's what we're waiting to hear. I'm going to take the liberty of trying to read your mind, since I feel you haven't been forthcoming. I think you've highlighted the real dangers Saddam posed in order to implicitly argue that preemptive war was justified regardless of the absence of WMD. And as a matter of fact, a strong case could be made for that position. Except for one thing: it's undemocratic to sell the war to voters on false premises. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 1, 2004 4:06 PM | Permalink Brian, Apparently you weren't reading the papers or watching television through out the entire year 2000. The big, bad liberal New York Times was one of the leaders in caricaturing Gore. Inventing the internet, inspiration for Love Story, etc. All press-invented fantasies. It WAS just one presidential campaign, but it was also the only one we've had in the last four years. Just one of dozens of examples: Blaming the president is SOP in presidential campaigns. It has ZERO to do with political or economic philosophy. You might have noticed that Republican candidates hold Democratic candidates responsible for not intervening in the economy by transfering more of the tax burden to the middle class and lightening up on the top 1%. That is government intervention. Neo-liberals demand it. Even before they move to no bid welfare for companies like Halliburton or criminalizing the use of market forces in negotiating government purchases of pharmaceuticals. Who is for government intervention again? Again, never mentioned by the mainstream media. They ARE ignorant, but not in the way you suggest. Posted by: Ben Franklin at November 1, 2004 4:10 PM | Permalink The online magazine Slate printed a piece evaluating the polls and pollsters, a useful compilation and evaluation of the major and minor organizations in the business. But they didn't publish the piece until the last week of October, when the campaign had only a few days to go. As if that's not bad enough, some legislators and journalists are now talking about the Electoral College or the Help America Vote Act. Day late, dollar short. Posted by: Jon Koppenhoefer at November 1, 2004 5:14 PM | Permalink So tell me, Uriel Wittenberg, have you looked at the key findings of the Duelfer Report? Did you find anything about the key findings that were worrysome to you? If you found nothing at all, there is no point in you continuing to read my comment. I am familiar with the Key Findings of the Duelfer Report. We published them editorially as a yeardstick for our readers. Knowing them as I do, if I were responding to questions actually asked by PIPA, I would have answered incorrectly, believing that the questions asked for something slightly different than they actually did. To put it another way, Uriel, you have the skill to phrase questions that would make it seem as if Duelfer found nothing to be worried about. You could do it, but it would be dissembling. Then you could promote your survey, claim it to be true, and be an ass for doing it. If my previous response was unclear, I apologize and hope this makes up for it. Uriel Wittenberg: You're evading the point, which was the PIPA survey's purported unfairness. Uhhh, no. What you wrote, that I was responding to: Here is the heart of the disease: even after a discussion directly addresses an issue, people on both sides walk away with their original prejudices intact and unchanged. Everyone's "reality" remains safe. Have I threatened your "reality" with my response? Here is the complete quote from Duelfer's Key Findings: Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.The relevant key finding pertaining to Appendix F in the report: While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.Does finding "a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions" contradict PIPA's statement that "reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq survey group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), conclud[e] before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them." Why use the qualifier significant program but not any qualifier (such as essentially or stockpile or capability) for weapons? Here is where Bush supporters will engage in a debate. Is weaponized mustard and sarin considered WMD? For the purposes of Iraq's disarmament, yes they were. Were these recently discovered chemical munitions part of an active WMD stockpile? No. Should these munitions been destroyed in the 12 years since the first Gulf War? Yes. Is there a debate about what does/should constitute WMD? Yes. You ask me a series of such questions about relevance. Relevant to what? Relevant to justifying the decision to go to war on March 19, 2003? Or relevant to the PIPA survey? The PIPA survey is flawed because it does not say, "before the war, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability had been essentially destroyed ...". Does it matter? Yes. Bush supporters' reality includes those munitions and the IIS labs and Kerry supporters' reality discounts them. In the PIPA survey, it becomes an all or nothing proposition. That way, we can ridicule each other for living in either the black or white reality. That's the flaw in the survey. Your response to me also indicates "the heart of the disease" by taking "the liberty of trying to read [my] mind, since [you] feel [I] haven't been forthcoming". Would you like me to read your mind and tell you what you were actually saying to me? Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2004 5:50 PM | Permalink Joe: Would anyone like to address that without reading the name or even knowing who most of you are, I feel it is easy to pick out who is a Democrat and who is a Republican. I'll take you up on that. People identify themselves as one or the other in some cases. There are also obvious things like saying "we" when discussing an ideology, or insulting the other ideology. Other than that, which "facts" someone chooses to site are generally a give away. It's clear often times that if such a fact is true, it would benefit one candidate, and the person who brings up that fact is probably a supporter of that candidate. I also maintain that if someone complains the press is biased against ideology X, they most likely belong to ideology X. I think closemindedness is what really makes me label someone as a partisan; the mentality that "I am right, you are wrong, and you are an idiot because you can't see what's so obviously true." Each side firmly believes they, and their facts, are right. Separate realities, anyone? Accompanying that, I see a great desire to convince, and almost no desire to learn. Openminded people may well have very strong beliefs, but somehow I just don't associate them with being partisan. Posted by: ErikaEM at November 1, 2004 6:20 PM | Permalink Tim, You ask: Does finding "a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions" contradict PIPA's statement that "reports by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the heads of the Iraq survey group David Kay and Charles Duelfer (chosen by the president), conclud[e] before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them." But you don't answer. My answer: No, there's really no contradiction I can see. You ask also: "Why use the qualifier significant program but not any qualifier (such as essentially or stockpile or capability) for weapons?" I really don't know what you mean. >Is weaponized mustard and sarin considered WMD? For the purposes of Iraq's disarmament, yes they were. You're not being clear. Are you disputing Duelfer's key finding that Iraq's WMD capability was "essentially destroyed in 1991"? >Is there a debate about what does/should constitute WMD? Yes. You're saying that Duelfer's definition of WMD is somewhat arbitrary? And that he's using a definition that is politically damaging to Bush? >You ask me a series of such questions about relevance. Relevant to what? I said at the outset of that specific comment: "You're evading the point, which was the PIPA survey's purported unfairness." >The PIPA survey is flawed because it does not say, "before the war, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability had been essentially destroyed ...". PIPA in fact says that "before the war Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor even a significant program for developing them." Your point here, I'm guessing, is that Iraq had no WMD capability -- but that it retained some amounts of actual WMD? I'm sorry, I'm lost here. >Bush supporters' reality includes those munitions and the IIS labs and Kerry supporters' reality discounts them. Well, sorry, but people can't have a reasonable discussion if they all have their own definitions for terms like WMD. Again -- are you actually disputing Duelfer's definition of the term? If so you should say so straightforwardly. ----sbw: I'll respond later, no time just now, my apologies ....... Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 1, 2004 6:29 PM | Permalink sbw: >If my previous response was unclear, I apologize and hope this makes up for it. It doesn't. >if I were responding to questions actually asked by PIPA, I would have answered incorrectly, believing that the questions asked for something slightly different than they actually did. Please explain what you are talking about. I can't read your mind. Which question? What would your answer have been? And so on. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 1, 2004 8:00 PM | Permalink Ben, You don't really address my point. Did many reporters and pundits find Gore somewhat inane? Yes, many did. Did they "support" George W. Bush? Hardly. Bush was to them rather an unknown quantity and they had little of substance to say about him, other than they thought Gore was probably smarter. Gore they had lived with for eight years as veep and found him strikingly disingenuous, and since the press is averse to doing homework it focused on Gore, who provided them plenty of material, which they adorned in familiar ways. What you seem to argue is that if the press ever slagged Gore then ipso facto they were in the bag for Bush. So whom did the New York Times endorse? Check out the Oct 29, 2000 edition of the paper if you're not sure. If I can hold two thoughts in my head at once, so can you. The press thought Gore ran a very odd campaign, and so he did. He "took the initiative in creating the Internet", took money from monks while claiming he had no idea there was any fundraising going on, and comported himself very strangely in the debates. Much of the criticism he got comes from the press' juvenile obsession with style points, but here is where you should focus: little of it had anything to do with opposition to the policies a Gore administration was likely to pursue. The two thoughts I ask you to simultaneously entertain are that the press found Gore lacking for various trivial reasons, and the press generally aligns itself with liberal causes. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. Moreover, the rough handling they supposedly gave Gore has been greatly overstated in hindsight. There were plenty of puff pieces swooning over the man's great erudition (one I recall even intimated that his doodles represented the doodles of a genius) to the point where one might wonder whether he was too good for us, the knavish and small-minded citizenry. You simply must get past the press' occasional spats with one of its Party's candidates and look at the larger picture. Brian: "The revolving door between Democratic Party activism and television and print jouralism?" Yes, familiar with it. It does exist. I am also familiar with Pat Buchanan, John Sununu, Tony Blankley, Frank Luntz, Mary Matalin, William Safire, John McLaughlin and others-- all of who have crossed over and became "press" or had their own shows. The breezy, why-of-course, no-reasonable-person-could-deny tone in which you assert that this revolving door works uniquely for one side is, in my view, completely unwarranted but typical of the derangement in the bias discourse. The door works for both parties. Same with the claims about presidents and jobs. All presidents, left and right, Donkey and Elephant inclined, claim to have created jobs. When the figures go up they take credit for it, when the figures go down their opponents take advantage of it. The notion that this claim resides exclusively with Kerry, Democrats and their press friends does not square with any political reality I am aware of. Tell Republican candidates to stop taking credit for job gains if you want politics to reflect the truer principle that economies--not presidents--create jobs. If the notion is absurd then it should be no problem for honest candidates to dispense with it. Then Democrats really will be the only ones peddling that snake oil. "Sectarian bitching?" That happens, sure. Were you to examine candidate Gore's press treatment, however, you would not be able to file it away under such a trivializing label. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 1, 2004 9:11 PM | Permalink You ask: ... But you don't answer. That's correct, I did not. I think you can have one of two discussions: 1. Was the PIPA survey flawed by asking an ambiguous question which would be interpreted differently by Bush supporters and Kerry supporters, or was the question unambiguous? 2. Are you personally in the Bush or Kerry reality and can you defend your perception of reality? You can try to combine the two in a single discussion, which is what you seem to be doing, but that may not lead to a resolution of either. My answer: No, there's really no contradiction I can see. You make a distinction then between the chemical weapons that have been found and what constitutes WMD that shares a reality with many Kerry supporters. Well, sorry, but people can't have a reasonable discussion if they all have their own definitions for terms like WMD. Again -- are you actually disputing Duelfer's definition of the term? If so you should say so straightforwardly. From the glossary of Duelfer's report: Weapons of Mass Destruction. Weapons that are capable of a high order of destruction and/or being used in such a manner as to kill large numbers of people. Can be nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons but excludes the means of transporting or propelling the weapons where such means are a separable and divisible part of the weapon. Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons need to be of a certain size to count as WMD — single chemical or biological artillery rounds would not be considered to be WMD, due to the limited damage they could produce. Do I disagree with this definition? No. Am I aware of other definitions? Yes, I am. Is there a set, magical number of weaponized mustard artillery shells, or sarin rockets, or combination of the two which crosses the threshold into WMD? No, there is not. However, I can quote two relevant portions of Duelfer's Senate testimony (Video, Unofficial Transcript): (all emphasis mine) ...Your point here, I'm guessing, is that Iraq had no WMD capability -- but that it retained some amounts of actual WMD? My point is that the PIPA survey did not distinguish between the chemical weapons that have been found and what constitutes a WMD capability, leaving it up to the interpretation of the respondents. Bush supporters would likely interpret the chemical weapons as WMD and Kerry supporters would not. In order to interpret their responses in the context of "reality", the survey should have defined what constituted WMD, using Duefler's defintion or their own. Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2004 10:23 PM | Permalink From PIPA (emphasis mine): "Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) ..." Posted by: Tim at November 1, 2004 10:33 PM | Permalink A few points: journalists should be capable of more objectivity than we have seen. Nobody is going to be perfect, and depending on the specific subject, objectivity may be relativee. The apparent symmetry of complaints from the right and the complaints from the left is not a good measure. It doesn't mean that the journalists are off the mark one way or the other. One way of looking at objectivity is to compare the level of scrutiny on a subject of one side vs the other. An example is the difference in reporting the military careers of Bush and Kerry. Bush was presumed guilty of something - cowardice, AWOL, etc. The press jumped on everything to make various claims, without even understanding the subject. On the other hand, we have Kerry. Kerry was assailed by 60 eyewitnesses to his actions in Vietnam. The press worked hard to find ways to discredit each charge, and appears to be convinced that it had. The press also failed to force Kerry to release the records which could resolve the controversy (and hence missed the high probability that Kerry received a less than honorable discharge - NY Sun today). In other words, their actions towards Bush were clearly aimed at finding "gotchas" while the action towards Kerry were aimed at absolving him of all charges, with clearly no interest at all in finding gotchas. THAT is an example of blatant press bias. The treatment of the Swifties was also dishonest, and the methods of determining the truth were inappropriate. I don't want to argue the Swifties case here, and suspect Jay would be pretty annoyed by it. The issue is how the two candidates were investigated (or not) by the MSM. Bush: Kerry: As a result, one can read in the MSM a refutation of every charge. Those refutations, in most cases, simply are incorrect. The key is to look at the differences in approach, not to argue conclusions. If a blatant bias pattern isn't obvious here even to lefties, I would be shocked. I think journalists can do better than this, but they wanted Kerry to appear perfect and Bush to appear with mud all over him. I chose this issue because I know the most about it, and know some of the people involved, but there are many, many moore over the last 40 years. In other words, some bias is blatant. And if it is blatant, it should preventable by an editor or reporters keeping an eye on things. But this year's MSM has made it completely obvious that it's primary purpose is to elect anybody but Bush. One way of looking at media bias is as an arrogant exercise of power. I think that this has been the case this year - especially at the New York Times and CBS. When someone choses to use his position in the MSM to affect an election, by skewing the reporting, that is bad for Democracy. And that is what is visible. Attempted October surprises. Rathergate (the SOB got caught this time), suppressing of Kerry critics. There are people in the Fourth Estate who are abusing their power. They are playing the game of Kingmaker, which is not in the spirit of America. Conservatives see this. We want to destroy the kingmakers - to remove their power which they should not have. Posted by: John Moore at November 1, 2004 11:04 PM | Permalink Uriel Wittenberg, when a poll question inclines toward a specific answer one ought not be surprised at the results. As any reasonably critical eye can see when faced with the obvious, the poll question should be the story, rather than the answer. Tim, You're arguing that PIPA was wrong to say Iraq had no WMD in 2003. But you don't want to contradict Duelfer, whose official report says the WMD "was essentially destroyed in 1991" (and not restored anytime afterwards). Yours is an awkward mission indeed. I already quoted the Duelfer line above. But you don't like it. "Essentially destroyed" is so blunt. So you seek out other Duelfer quotes -- the report's formal definition of WMD, Duelfer's congressional testimony -- which might present better opportunities to sow confusion and evade the truth. You charge me with "mak[ing] a distinction then between the chemical weapons that have been found and what constitutes WMD." Yes we do. Me and Duelfer. You note that our perspective "shares a reality with many Kerry supporters." Well, perhaps, perhaps. Actually, I feel I share a reality (though I usually say simply, share reality, since I don't really think there are that many to choose from) with just about everybody. >Is there a set, magical number of weaponized mustard artillery shells, or sarin rockets, or combination of the two which crosses the threshold into WMD? No, there is not. Ingenious defense. The cop can't say exactly how fast I was going. So he can't say I was speeding. You quote the congressional testimony, but the only clue you offer as to your point is through highlighting. What's the point? That some CW was found? We already knew that. Your point can be made in one sentence. I'll be blunt, because nonsense like yours badly needs to be clearly exposed. The reason for your longwinded, fuzzy, confusing circumlocutions is that your straightforward point is embarrassing -- that point being that even the small amounts of weapons that were found could arguably be called "WMD." That's your entire point, isn't it? Is there any support at all for your position? Did any newspaper call it WMD? Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 2, 2004 12:09 AM | Permalink sbw, You objected to PIPA by saying: if I were responding to questions actually asked by PIPA, I would have answered incorrectly, believing that the questions asked for something slightly different than they actually did. Please explain what you are talking about. I can't read your mind. Which question? What would your answer have been? And so on. when a poll question inclines toward a specific answer one ought not be surprised at the results. Stephen, I am making an effort, I promise you. But your words are gibberish to me. You're a journalist. But I can't understand what you write. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 2, 2004 12:25 AM | Permalink The biggest lessons for the press in 2004 The handwringing over putative left-wing press bias is pervasive, and as a result the press no longer has one (if it ever did). Lesson 1, then, is Act like a lawyer, not like the press. All the kids over at Fox News have been acting like lawyers for the last eight years. The reason our legal system works is because there's a lawyer on one side and a lawyer on the other side. The right wing has its partisan press. The left does not, and it must. Are you left wing? Work for a paper? Tell your boss to start running left-wing editorials on page 1. If he won't, quit, and go start a blog that says what you really believe. Lesson 2, act like a scientist, not like a journalist. In other words, write articles about the truth, and put dishonest partisan bickering about the truth either in the last paragraph or the dustbin. If your sources sound to you like they're spinning, you probably shouldn't even include what they say in your article. Lesson 3, act like a media critic, not a mere journalist. The most honest, convincing things I've heard from journalists this season have been in media criticism outlets, where, miraculously, serious political news not only gets discussed but gets sorted out so that I don't just feel like I'm being lied to (lied to by partisan operatives, yes, and also lied to by the journalists that fecklessly quote them.) The reason bloggers are so popular is because they are media critics. Americans do not so much hate the press as we want to see it disssected and rationalized into a form we can understand. Lesson 4, act like the most responsible parent you know. Posted by: jim at November 2, 2004 1:22 AM | Permalink Tim: Just to clarify, you do disagree with the claim: it's an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. You say it's not so, and this is not an article of faith on the Right, correct? Or do I have it wrong? Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 2, 2004 1:24 AM | Permalink Thanks, Jim. Most elegant and interesting. But what do you mean by the parent thing? You left that pretty opaque. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 2, 2004 1:28 AM | Permalink Jay: Just to clarify, you do disagree with the claim: it's an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. You say it's not so, and this is not an article of faith on the Right, correct? Or do I have it wrong? Would it help if we ask Zell Miller? Can we distinguish between ideology and political party? Can we distinguish between the press treatment toward political party candidates and policy? Does this from ABC's The Note bear repeating? Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions." They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories. More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow. The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies. It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending. It remains fixated on the unemployment rate. It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base." It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base. Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!). The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race. That means the President's communications advisers have a choice: Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them. So we ask again: What's it going to be, Ken, Karen, Mary, Terry, Nicole, and Dan? Posted by: Tim at November 2, 2004 2:00 AM | Permalink Jim, "Be a media critic not a mere journalist" directly addresses the appeal of the Daily Show. They do it, they don't just yammer about it. Your point number one resonates with a post of my own earlier in the thread: The sooner the American people can recognize the symmetry between the American Enterprise Institute's relation to Limbaugh/Fox/Ailes and the Progressive Research Institute/Media Matters relation to Air America the clearer the air will get and the more likely the country will be able to have some semblance of rational policy debate. That day can't come too soon. Air America doesn't approach being a serious counterweight yet. Pretending the mainstream media are a counterweight is a cruel joke. Posted by: Ben Franklin at November 2, 2004 2:26 AM | Permalink Uriel Wittenberg, Q38. As you may know, Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector selected by the Bush administration to investigate whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, has just presented his final report to Congress. Is it your impression he concluded that, just before the war, Iraq ... - Had actual weapons of mass destruction Posted by: Tim at November 2, 2004 3:44 AM | Permalink Sorry, Tim: I am having a hard time with this one. I'm still trying to figure out whether you dispute the claim it's an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. It would seem like an easy question to answer. I understand you want to draw a distinction between Democratic ideas and Democratic candidates, but my question was about "supporting Democrats," which means their candidates, their office holders. You told me I had it wrong-- well, not just wrong, but "I could not be more wrong." Indeed, I am so wrong I am "blinded." You said (more than once) that "Democrats get a break from the press" actually isn't a common belief on the Right, so I'm just fact-checking here. Can you assist? This is what you said earlier in this thread: Jay wrote: By since it is axiomatic on the Right that the liberal press "helps" Democrats, the point has to be denied. It contradicts the Right's religion. And it is denied. All the time. So just once more for the record, so there is no mistake: According to Tim, it is not an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. Is that correct? Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 2, 2004 8:53 AM | Permalink Tim's lengthy and confusing rationalizations for his claim that the PIPA report is biased can be summed up (as I do above) as: "even the small amounts of weapons that were found could arguably be called 'WMD.'" That's his argument. Tim doesn't want to confirm or deny this paraphrasing of his position. To render it so plainly makes its foolishness apparent. So his reply consists of an inexplicable quotation of one of the PIPA survey questions. If people like Tim and Stephen Waters were regularly confronted in public debate, then there would not be "separate realities" in American politics, and propaganda would be exposed for all to see as blatant falsehood. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 2, 2004 9:41 AM | Permalink Jim, The NYTimes already runs Left advocacy editorials on the front page. They've done it numerous times, just as they've taken up liberal crusades when they feel like it (remember Augusta?). What I find striking is the plain ignorance (or, more charitably, forgetfulness) of many on the Left as to how tilted the playing field has been, in their favor, until quite recently. When the Left screams of Right-friendly outlets like talk radio or Fox News, they indicate that this is terribly unfair. Speaks volumes of their sense of fairness. "Let's you and me and my ex-boxer friend Tyrone agree to do this fight on the up and up, okay?" As does the giant hissy fit they threw when the Swifties scraped together a few bucks. They suddenly forget that a Left leaning billionaire had been financing a smear-heavy PAC and directing bilious accusations at Bush and the Republican party for over six years. Hey, that's free speech, completely different from those Swifty "smears". And the revolving door between the Kerry campaign and these "independent" groups? It's simply not polite to mention these things in mixed company. Jay, Yes, familiar with it. It does exist. I am also familiar with Pat Buchanan, John Sununu, Tony Blankley, Frank Luntz, Mary Matalin, William Safire, John McLaughlin and others-- all of who have crossed over and became "press" or had their own shows. Then you also know that your example is disingenuous, and a pretty good example of the way pressthink elides the subject of its biases. You know that Buchanan, Sununu, Safire, et al do not anchor hard news programs, they do not determine the contents of page one of any newspaper, they are pundits or in some cases mere entertainment figures. I am familiar with the argument you are trying to make: broaden the definition of "press" or "journalist" until it includes anyone who has ever uttered an opinion in print or on camera, then point to all the conservative voices, then pretend they don't have liberal counterparts. Yes, that Safire, he practically lords over the NYTimes like a demigod. Amazingly, just by turning in opinion columns, he undoes the efforts of the news reporters. That is your answer to the revolving door? It's a pretty weak defense. The breezy, why-of-course, no-reasonable-person-could-deny tone in which you assert that this revolving door works uniquely for one side is, in my view, completely unwarranted but typical of the derangement in the bias discourse. Apparently my arguments weren't deranged enough, as you felt the need to trick them out with your caricature. I never said uniquely, but might I note that your discovery of that claim is typical of the derangement in the pressthink discourse. What I have said is that despite the occasional (and largely petty) sniping the press sometimes directs at its Party candidates, the net effect favors liberal ideology. Same with the claims about presidents and jobs. All presidents, left and right, Donkey and Elephant inclined, claim to have created jobs. When the figures go up they take credit for it, when the figures go down their opponents take advantage of it. The notion that this claim resides exclusively with Kerry, Democrats and their press friends does not square with any political reality I am aware of. It's a notion that you have created and chosen to tilt at because it's apparently more fun than addressing anything I've written. I noted that the press assumption of government as the answer is the philisophical twin of the Democratic Party. Notwithstanding the bluster of politicians seeking re-election, do you honestly believe that this assumption has no bearing on the press' treatment of conservative and libertarian critiques of policy? Must you deal only in caricature and simple-minded retorts? Tell Republican candidates to stop taking credit for job gains if you want politics to reflect the truer principle that economies--not presidents--create jobs. If the notion is absurd then it should be no problem for honest candidates to dispense with it. Then Democrats really will be the only ones peddling that snake oil. Would that Republican candidates treated my word as divine. As it happens, you appear to be conflating the press view with the Democratic Party stance, which I think makes my point. You see, Jay, I wasn't criticizing Democrats, I was criticizing the press and its assumptions, which are narrow and shallow and slanted. At least one of us remembers the purpose of this site and its difference from hopeless, Crossfire-style ranting about red team and blue team. And what makes you think I don't criticize Republicans for the same thing? Is there some perverse equal time rule that each poster must adhere to on your comments board? You are lapsing into a peculiar brand of pressthink. But don't worry, this kind of argument won't exist in five years, or ten years. Biases are ultimately self-defeating. You can win in the short run but in the long run the effect is much like that of inbreeding. I'm quite sanguine about the effect the press has had on this election. I think its worst tendencies have been largely nullified. But it is still a bit much to see the accusation of a bias blithely waved away as so much "deranged" Right wing ranting. "Sectarian bitching?" That happens, sure. Were you to examine candidate Gore's press treatment, however, you would not be able to file it away under such a trivializing label. Oh, please do tell me what I should file it away under. I guess I gave the wrong answer, professor. Uriel Wittenberg: If people like Tim and Stephen Waters were regularly confronted in public debate, then there would not be "separate realities" in American politics, and propaganda would be exposed for all to see as blatant falsehood. How sad, Uriel, that your approach to communications -- pushing people away -- probably limits the willingness of others to help you grow. And its even sadder that the value of occasional insight others may take the time to offer seems to escape you. For those who have disagreed with the assessment that the PIPA survey methodology is suspect, see: PIPA Presumptions. Uriel Wittenberg, Rather than respond as to whether you have correctly characterized me, my previous posts or summarized in one sentence my attempt at pointing out one of the flaws in the PIPA survey and summary, I would like to ask a question. Can you explain, or point to where PIPA explains, the discrepancy between Question 13 and Question 38 of their survey. That way, I'll know that you've actually looked at the underlying data and thought about the survey methods. Posted by: Tim at November 2, 2004 12:26 PM | Permalink Jay, Is it axiomatic, an article of faith, on the Right that the liberal-populated press helps Democrats? I don't think it helps Democrats, no. I think Democrats have been ill-served by a press corps that thinks like them. Posted by: Tim at November 2, 2004 12:33 PM | Permalink Brian: You did say that the revolving door works uniquely to the Democrats benefit, and I am simply pointing out that it works for both parties. Its effects on the mainstream press mind are negligible. Try to name a single person who came from government and Democratic party politics in a decision-making role at the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times or Wall Street Journal. I doubt there is one. You have latched onto something that isn't going to explain much. The "press assumption of government as the answer to everything" that you write of. No, I don't see it. I know of no evidence for it, either. I think journalists are cynical about government working at all. They are hardly the type to expect, for example, that social programs work out as planned. They are suckers for the law of unintended consequence; it makes for wonderful news stories. Believers that government is the solution? Nope. What I said was "deranged" is the bias discourse. If you take that as saying that you, Brian, are deranged, then you are not a very careful reader. Bush hatred is a deranged discourse, too. We have many of them around today. Media bias is one. It's not a personal remark. It's an impersonal condition. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 2, 2004 12:49 PM | Permalink The indefatigable "Tim" has set up more hoops for me to jump through. And sbw, though his willingness to help me grow is "probably" attenuated, nonetheless has further anti-PIPA arguments to present. Perhaps I've offered these people unwonted encouragement. But my engagement was not unlimited. Sometimes a fellow has to conclude (as for example I've concluded in the past with the New York Times ombudsman) that rational arguments aren't going to penetrate. I think the case here has been made. Posted by: Uriel Wittenberg at November 2, 2004 3:33 PM | Permalink Rationality is a funny thang. Many who accuse people of not having it, frequently have considerable difficulty working with it. Uriel, I just want to congratulate you on winning your shadowboxing match. I want you to think well of me as a good loser as you head off to your next TKO. Posted by: Tim at November 2, 2004 4:03 PM | Permalink I am disappointed that the discussion about PIPA did not allow us to come to understanding. I certainly tried to present useful views in a context to make them easily understood and to understand, in turn, the thoughts at odds with my understanding. It does not feel good to invest good time and thought to try to find effective synthesis and it doesn't work out. Bloggers are gonna have an annoying time stopping spammers if advertisers catch on to posting ads in the comments. Either that or force people to register on their blogs to post, or be registered bloggers on a service. Posted by: Steve at November 3, 2004 6:11 AM | Permalink Jay asks: it's an article of faith on the Right that Democrats get a break from the press because the press is populated by liberals. I'm going to answer this almost. Yes, it's a widespread belief on the right that Democrats get a break from the press. It comes from observation. Whether some on the right deduce that the cause of observed favoritism is the liberalness of the press is a different issue. Those on the right who try to explain the observed phenomena are likely to conclude that the bias is due to the liberalness of the practitionners in the press. Posted by: John Moore at November 4, 2004 4:16 AM | Permalink Technical note regarding comment spam. This has been going on for quite a while. If you go to my blog (see link), and try to post a comment, you will find a requirement to register at a universal service. Rogerr Simon uses the same technology. The spam was actually designed to raise the Google ranking of advertised sites. Posted by: John Moore at November 4, 2004 4:19 AM | Permalink Ah, I'll look into that. Posted by: Steve at November 5, 2004 10:52 AM | Permalink |
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