PressThink: In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press

In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press

Before the certification of "Jeff Gannon" as a White House reporter there was the Bush Administration's de-certification move against the Washington press. These two things are deeply related.

The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft’s tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.

That’s Howard Altman of Philadelphia’s City Paper (Aug. 28, 2003) describing the experience of trying to cover Attorney General John Ashcroft during his speaking tour on behalf of the Patriot Act.

As the flock disappears down a hall in a hurried scurry, the bespectacled woman in the black dress who could have been Ainsley, the perky Republican from The West Wing, looks at me and waxes apologetic. “I am sorry,” she says as the last of the camera crews whiz by. “But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television.”

That was when I first became aware that the Bush Administration was putting an end to business-as-usual between the executive and the press. Ashcroft had Secret Service agents, or others in his employ, bar newspaper reporters—including of course those at the big national dailies—from press opportunities as he traveled the country arguing for the Patriot Act.

It was a sign: new sherriff in town. “We know who our friends are.” All that. Ashcroft wasn’t the first to declare local TV the only interview worth doing. Except there were certain ideas attached to his move, and these led outward from the Patriot Act into the wider political culture. Ideas like: Eliminate the filter (and guess who that is?) Howard Kurtz reported this on Sep. 15, 2003:

Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock says her boss, with few exceptions, is only granting short interviews to local TV stations as a way of “explaining key facts directly to the American people and not having as much of a filter from people who are already invested in having a different view of it.”

Ashcroft’s person tells us the story right there. She says it is legitimate to exclude the traditional press, and deny it the role of questioner on behalf of the public, because a.) this group has forfeited all claim to legitimacy by being so invested in a “different view;” and b.) the Attorney General is perfectly capable of explaining the key facts to the American people himself, with the kind assistance of local television stations (she did not say “reporters”) who know enough not to filter the message.

It is true that all Administrations want to speak to the nation in an unfiltered way; there’s nothing notable about that. All at one time or another see the press as “against” them. All cry foul— and in the name of the facts! Hating the press is normal behavior in the White House. So is favoring the sympathetic correspondent. What Ashcroft was doing went beyond all this.

There’s a difference between going around the press in an effort to avoid troublesome questions, and trying to unseat the idea that these people, professional journalists assigned to cover politics, have a legitimate role to play in our politics. Ashcroft was out to unseat that idea about the traditional press. He wanted it out of the picture of how you battle for public opinion.

“He is not talking to print. Only talking to television.”

John Ashcroft in the fall of ‘03 was simply doing his part in a broader de-certification move that has been mounted against the political press since 2001. His tactics turned out to be among the milder measures the Bush forces were willing to take in pursuit of a policy that I would call post press— meaning after it is declared from the top that journalists represent no one but themselves.

Before the certification of “Jeff Gannon” as a White House reporter who was good to go there was the Bush Administration’s de-certification move against the Washington press, which it felt had to go. These two things are deeply related.

The idea that joins them was stated by Andrew Card, Bush’s chief of staff: “They don’t represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election,” said Card. “I don’t believe you have a check-and-balance function.”

See? No check and balance role. Not representative. That’s post-press thinking, coming from the Chief of Staff. It is a political innovation for which Bush does not get enough credit.

And here is what it yields in the press room, an emptiness described by Dan Froomkin at Nieman Watchdog in December:

Even more of a charade these days are the daily briefings held by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose robotic adherence to repeating the predetermined messages of the day — no matter what questions come his way — has driven some correspondents to despair. Only narcissists and cranks could possibly feel they are getting much out of asking a question at a McClellan press briefing. Not coincidentally, the cranks are increasingly sitting at the front of the briefing room and getting called upon, in part because some big media organizations don’t even bother to fill their assigned chairs anymore. What’s the point?

Recall what happened to the Air Traffic Controllers during Ronald Reagan’s first term. They were government workers—11,000 of them— fired in 1981 for going on strike when their contract said they couldn’t. They were replaced, and the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified their union.

“Jeff Gannon” (really James Dale Guckert) can be thought of as the replacement press, a fake journalist with a fake name working for a fake news organization, asking fake questions at a real press event. Until he asked one of President Bush that showed “unusually blatant sycophancy,” as the New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg wrote.

This tipped off the bloggers and the online troops of column left, and the investigation of Gannon and Talon News, his fake employer, began. See this summary from Media Citizen, this resource from Daily Kos, this background from Media Matters, this page of reports from Salon.

But also see Stuck at the Gates by Jon Garfunkel, showing how blogger Eileen Smith of Oregon began an effort in February 2004 to investigate Gannon, which alerted Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. But until January of this year the story didn’t go anywhere, even though Smith had asked about Gannon’s credentials, and begged the bigger blogs to look into it. The look is happening now. See the new blog Propagannon, devoted entirely to the investigation.

Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World has the outrageousness of it exactly right. I also like Brian Montopoli’s description of what “Jeff Gannon” did with his moment in the national spotlight, from CJR Daily:

Gannon asked questions designed not to get information from Bush but to demonstrate his allegiance to him, not to mention his disgust with Democrats and his own ostensible colleagues. Real journalists, the ones who belong in press conferences, know that access to a president is a rare gift, and they know enough not to squander it. Gannon threw away his opportunity in favor of self-aggrandizing partisan spectacle. He put himself and his agenda ahead of the public good, and he did it in a manner so egregious that he left little doubt of his intentions.

But this is troubling only from the perspective of a certain history that it has been the Bush Admninistration’s business to refute and reject. Basically it is the history of professionalism in the political press, the attempt to establish a tradition of reportorial authority apart from raw politics. (See the New Yorker’s Nick Lemann on the weakening of this tradition.)

Creating “Jeff Gannon” as a credible White House correspondent, and creating radical doubt about the intentions of mainstream journalists (in order to de-certify the traditional press) are two parts of the same effort, which stretches beyond the Bush team itself to allies in Republican Party politics, and new actors like Sinclair Broadcasting, or FreeRepublic.com, or Hugh Hewitt, or these guys.

It is this larger picture that accounts for a professional tribe of journalists who, as Lemann said, “collectively felt both more harshly attacked and less important” in 2004. The more harshly attacked part comes from the Culture War rumbling below, while the message “you’re unimportant” is sent directly from the top.

Ron Suskind is one of the journalists most attuned to this part of the story, and in October of last year he told Eric Boehlert of Salon (who has also been following it) what he saw:

Do you think there’s a coordinated attempt to knock journalists down so that what they have to say is taken less seriously?
There is a varied, national, forceful, coordinated campaign to do that, to try to create doubt about the long-held and long-respected work of the mainstream media. Absolutely.

So that Americans believe that what we do and say, what the mainstream media offer, is not of value, is not honest, is not factually accurate. And [that we are] not in any way connected to strong traditions of American public dialogue, that we’ve been co-opted, that we’re not objective, and that essentially we are carrying forward an agenda.

That’s de-certification, in my lexicon. Out of it was born the Bush Thesis about the press, which I examined here and Ken Auletta reported on here.

Modern Fourth Estate thinking (which is only about 50 years old) held that the White House correspondents—the people who have the regular, “hard” passes—were one of the checks and balances in official Washington, and thus part of the political establishment any President had to work with.

The press had a certain power that came in part from its longevity on the scene—how long has Bob Woodward been in office?—but also because the news media were gatekeepers to the big national audience (the networks did that) and a bulletin board for the players in Washington politics (the big newspapers were that.)

The press was tameable, sure. It could be managed, and manipulated. It could be fed photo opportunities. There were different ways to play it, but the assumption held that this “beast” was going to be there in the White House every day, and at all the stops the President made. Realism alone called for a certain wary respect. The national news media were considered part of the process, a “fixture.” They were sometimes called the permanent government.

During the two terms of George W. Bush, this idea has been dethroned and declared invalid. Political journalism—such as might come from the Washington Post, Newsweek, or City Paper—was re-classified as a special interest, a kind of lobbying force for itself, or the opposition.

“For perhaps the first time,” Aluetta wrote, “the White House has come to see reporters as special pleaders—pleaders for more access and better headlines—as if the press were simply another interest group, and, moreover, an interest group that’s not nearly as powerful.” I summarized the new thesis in April 2004:

Behold the basics of President Bush’s press think. You don’t represent the public. You’re not a part of the checks and balances. I don’t have to answer your questions. And you don’t have that kind of muscle anymore.

Whomever declared “Jeff Gannon” a valid correspondent believed, first, in the invalidity of the regular White House correspondents, whose representatives had of course rejected Gannon for a regular pass. As he rejected them. Froomkin reported on it (March 10, 2004) in the White House Briefing column he does for the Washington Post:

Gannon works for a tiny, supremely conservative organization called Talon News which publishes a Web site by the same name as well as one called GOPUSA.com. With the sole exception of Gannon, who says he is compensated, all the “reporters” are volunteers.
Gannon’s presence in the White House briefing room is something of an irritant to most of the press corps, which considers his questions at briefings to be preposterous softballs.

And in return, Gannon sometimes writes on his own Web site about his views of the corps and how there is “perhaps no depth to which it will not sink in order to undermine a presidency.”

In this view, there is no such thing as journalism; there is only raw politics. According to Media Matters, Gannon said on a Webcast radio show January 27th that the White House press corps “deserves to be gone around because they’re not telling the truth about Social Security reform.”

The key word is deserves. An illegitimate press demands not only national scorn but practical replacement. It is in this sense that “Jeff Gannon” deserved his press pass, Armstrong Williams deserved his $240,000, and Ketchum public relations deserved $97 million of taxpayer money to help the Bush Administration communicate the message.

(My sense is that the big uncovered facts in this scandal are to be found there, in the $97 million pot of post-press money that went to Ketchum, a PR firm willing to bend the rules, and help create a replacement for real journalism.)

In the press room of the White House that thinks itself post-press, many of the people who have been de-certified still show up for their jobs each day, expecting some kind of briefing, as if they were, still, the Fourth Estate, as if they yet had some role in national politics. It probably galls the Administration that the ritual with real journalists has to go on, since “they don’t represent the public any more than other people do.”

After Matter: Notes, reactions and links…

Here’s some news, announced yesterday: I have been nominated for Blogger of the Year in 2004 by The Week magazine, as part of its second annual Opinion Awards. (Press release.) The other nominees are Power Line, Matthew Yglesias, Hugh Hewitt, and Low Culture. According to the letter they sent me, the Blogger of the Year award honors “bloggers who consistently produced work that was thoughtful, provocactive and that made a difference.” Thanks!

Is this site the Firefox of regional journalism? (See Scott Rosenberg’s superb rendering of why Firefox will thrive even if Microsoft scrambles to improve Internet Explorer.)

Eric Boehlert of Salon continues his standout coverage: “Why has the mainstream media ignored the White House media access scandal?”

Here’s an angle: Leading “new media” conservative website WorldNetDaily is furious at Gannon for being… a fake, an embarrassment to allies, a pretend conservative journalist, without the tools to succeed. Joseph Farah in a commentary:

There is no substitute for good journalism. There is no substitute for seeking the truth. There is no substitute for upholding high ethical standards. There is no substitute for fierce independence.
What the pretenders did backfired. They have hurt their own ideological cause more than they know. They have tarnished the image of the administration they championed. They have undermined the cause of the responsible New Media and the free press in America.

The rest is worth reading. Sounds remarkably like the Pseudo-Conservative Outrage Machine described by the Daily Howler.

Meanwhile, “Jeff Gannon” recently re-launched his website (Funny slogan… “A Voice of the New Media: So feared by the Left it had to take me down.”) AmericaBlog, one of the spear carriers on the story, has a point-by-point reply.

The best single text for understanding “Jeff Gannon” and his role in the White House press room is this video download from Keith Olbermann’s staff at MSNBC. It shows Scott McClellan relying on “Gannon” and not just for softball questions. “Go ahead, Jeff” is such a good title for this story.

Anyone interested in the “blogs mobilize” part of the Gannon story will be interested in this post, Battle For The Blogosphere: “How The Lefty Blogs Can Win The Blogosphere, Revive Their Party, And Save Our Country (And Why They Won’t).”

The Nashua Advocate adds some interesting detail about “Gannon” and his methods. In multiple posts, whyareweback keeps proving how fake Talon News is.

Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher: Both Houses of Congress Get Involved in ‘Gannon’ Case. Bears watching.

“I’d have no problem with an amateur like Jeff Gannon asking the President softball questions, if he were transparent about his political affiliation (‘Jeff Gannon, GOPUSA’ might work) and if I saw the President take hardball questions from liberal bloggers in return.” Sed politics has a different take. Check into it.

David Corn of The Nation has problems with Gannongate. (His term, not mine…)

White House daily briefings should be open to as diverse a group as possible. There is a need for professional accreditation; space is limited. Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing journalists with identifiable biases to pose questions to the White House press secretary and even the president… Last year, political bloggers—many of whom have their own biases and sometimes function as activists—sought credentials to the Democratic and Republican conventions. That was a good thing. Why shouldn’t Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, John Aravosis, or Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos) be allowed to question Scott McClellan or George W. Bush?

Mark Cooper, who also writes for The Nation, has a similar take.

From the Observer in the UK: The mole, the US media and a White House coup: “The reporter who wasn’t is part of a wider press scandal, writes Paul Harris in New York.” The wider scandal is the subversion of the press. He gets most of it right, although a little breathlessly. Good on the bloggers role too.

The Los Angeles Times picks “confused fluff” as its genre for examining the Gannon Story. Johanna Neuman, “An Identity Crisis Unfolds in a Not-So-Elite Press Corps.” Weightless and banal, except for this idea at the end:

“I look at the Gannon story — I used to refer to him as Jeff GOP — as demonstrating the impact of televising the press briefing,” said Martha Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University.
“The television lens has brought into the briefing room people who have a political viewpoint and find the briefing a way to express it.”

Wall Street Journal reporters Christopher Cooper and John D. McKinnon say it’s become about “fringe” characters:

Both the question and the questioner exemplify a steady evolution that has occurred in the White House briefing room in recent years. Once the clubby preserve of big-name newspapers and networks, it has lately become a political stage where a growing assortment of reporters, activists and bloggers function not only as journalists but as participants in a unique form of reality TV.

For background, see PressThink (April 25, 2004), Bush to Press: “You’re Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don’t Accept That.” And Ken Aueltta, Fortress Bush: How the White House keeps the press under control.

For a brief sketch, with links, of PressThink’s earlier attempts to piece together the Bush White House’s strategy of de-certifying the national press corps, beginning in fall of 2003, read on…”

It started, as I said in my post, with John Ashcroft: National Explainer. (September 16, 2003, shortly after PressThink’s debut.) Why Karen Ryan Deserved What She Got (March 31, 2004) was my second look at the Bush Administration’s assault on the practice of journalism— the impersonation of a reporter by PR woman Ryan.

In a follow up, Flacks Cannot Say They’re “Reporting” Anymore, (April 20, 2004) I told of pressuring the Public Relations Society of America to either declare what Ryan did wrong, or say out loud that they wouldn’t. (They did, meekly.)

My first look at the Bush Thesis, which I consider an imaginative leap in press relations, was A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? (April 13, 2004) I was asking: if Bush meant what he said about “just another special interest,” why would he call a press conference at a rocky moment? That led to Bush to Press: “You’re Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don’t Accept That.”(April 25, 2004) where I explained the Bush Thesis, and the de-certification impulse, in more depth.

I also learned something from the reactions. Many on the cultural right cheered my report on the Bush Thesis. They saw it as just, and just what was needed. They loved it that Bush stood up to journalists. (You represent the American public? I don’t think so.) For a time, Bush to Press was PressThink’s most heavily read post. The put down made sense to them. They saw no problem with it.

That reaction was one thing that led to There’s Signal in That Noise: The White House, the Reality Principle and the Press (June 23, 2004): “Not engaging with opponents’ arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes— all are of a piece with not letting the ‘liberal media’ cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House.”

I examined the cultural front and the Right’s complaints with the press in Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes (Oct. 4, 2004), which tried to distinguish between those “frustrated and angry with the traditional news media,” who want changes in the institution, and another group, “posing as critics of bias,” who simply want to discredit and destroy it.

On. October 28, 2004, I was quoted by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times, “I think there’s a campaign under way to totally politicize journalism and totally politicize press criticism… It’s really an attack not just on the liberal media or press bias, it’s an attack on professionalism itself, on the idea that there could be disinterested reporters.”

In The Coming Apart of An Ordered World: Bloggers Notebook, Election Eve (Oct. 31, 2004) I told of getting phone calls from editors alarmed about the coordinated attacks they were feeling as the election drew closer. I also nominated Ron Suskind’s New York Times magazine article, “Without a Doubt” for campaign piece of the year— a heroic effort to describe the “leap” in thinking that the Bush team has made.

Then on the day after the 2004 election I wrote Are We Headed for an Opposition Press? “The Bush White House has the national press in a box,” I wrote. “As with so many other situations, they have changed the world and allowed the language of the old world to keep running while exploring unchallenged the fact of the new. The old world was the Fourth Estate, and the watchdog role of the press, the magic of the White House press conference. It was a feeling that, though locked in struggle much of the time, journalists and presidents needed each other. Although it was never put this way, they glamourized Washington politics together, and this helped both.

“In Bushworld, all is different.”

Finally, Bloggers Are Missing in Action as Ketchum Tests the Conscience of PR described the falsification of journalism by means of a public relations firm, Ketchum, favored by the Bush Administration with $97 million in contracts, one of which went to conservative columnist Armstrong Williams.

Now the trail has led to Jeff Gannon, and In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press. As far as I’m concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Posted by Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 12:45 AM Print

Katherine: But using ponctual cases to destroy decades old institutions simply because they disagree with our views just seems counter-productive and irresponsible.

That's a great conservative argument. In fact, that's been a conservative argument for decades since the 60s and 70s. It's at the heart of the counter-revolution/culture war.

What I find very interesting is that liberals are making this argument in defense of this incarnation of global cosmopolitan, transnational journalism.

It seems to me that the two main functions of the 4th Estate - witness and watchdog - are under seige. As a witness, journalists are accused of being stenographers and PR hacks by partisans of each political party. If you are a watchdog, then you have a political agenda - you are the opposition.

There are many theories of why this is so. I subscribe to three.

1. The press has undercut their role as witness through he said/she said, View from Nowhere, the soundbite, the anonymous source, and being a slave to the constraints of their medium (column inches, reverse triangle, and TV summaries between commercials). This cuts at the heart of their "professional" credo. They are no longer considered by many to be reliable, or trustworthy, witnesses - unprofessional in their craft as evidenced by participating in staged events, scripted broadcasts and editorial selection.

2. Watchdog journalism has been undercut by "Gotcha" journalism (see Searls) . There was a time when the "Truth" of the underlying story, or the power of the 1st Amendment, had enough public support that fake evidence, quotes maliciously taken out of context, and destroying reputations in the jury of public opinion was acceptable. There was a widely held public opinion that the decades old institutions of state power and capitalism needed a good kick in the teeth and the 4th Estate was the tool by which to deliver it. But today, Liberalism, Progressivism and the press are suffering a credibility crisis born from the excesses of that revolution.

3. Conservatives have been on a Long March to challenge the authority of this 30/40 year old incarnation of an institutional press. Read Kaplan again, and think about the charges of a liberal media by conservatives:

Because he always seems to define even the most heroic institutions by their worst iniquities, his target is authority itself. Disclaimers notwithstanding, he is the soul of the left incarnate.

Does the Left rise up in defense of what Jay calls "traditional press" and attack the new conservative media out of a sense of kinship? Is it the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Combine Kaplan with ABC's The Note here ("Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.") and here ("One party knows the press is its 'enemy'; one party mistakenly thinks the press is its 'friend.'"). Combine it with Lemann from Jay's link here:

...
Conservatives are relativists when it comes to the press. In their view, nothing is neutral: there is no disinterested version of the news; everything reflects politics and relationships to power and cultural perspective. If mainstream journalists find it annoying that conservatives think of them as unalterably hostile, they find it just as annoying that liberals think of them as the friend who keeps letting them down.
...
However, Keller, who is himself of indeterminate politics but is probably more conservative than his fiery populist predecessor, Howell Raines, went on, “Conservatives feel estranged because they feel excluded. ... [the whole paragraph is key]
...
Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC News, whose variegated domain includes cable television, and even blogs, plainly felt that the nightly news broadcast needs to have its red-state credentials in order. He said of NBC’s new anchor, Brian Williams, “He’s a great journalist, a great reporter. Having said that, he’s a huge nascar fan, has been since his father took him to the track when he was a kid. He cares a lot about his faith. He wants to take the broadcast on the road a lot. He was on the road the whole week before the inauguration. Brian does get it. He once did a story on Cabela’s”—the superstore chain for hunters. “A lot of the people in the newsroom said, ‘Gee I didn’t know about that.’ But he did. And many of our bureaus did. We’re not just the Northeast Corridor.” One doesn’t get the sense that Shapiro worries about the possibility that NBC’s anchor might be out of touch with the values and concerns of residents on the Upper West Side.

Did you hear that? Do you hear it hear in comments? It's right in line with Okrent's column on the liberal slant at the NYT.

Do conservatives want all their media to be Fox News? I don't think so. I don't watch Fox News at all and I'm not the only one removed from the Left that doesn't. But I do think it's good for our country to have a Fox News that can be held accountable just as CBS and CNN have been.

And on that note, I'll add a fourth trend that influences - but is not directly related to the crumbling credibility of the witness/watchdog press. And that's the Information Age flow around gatekeepers. That undercuts the authority of the gatekeepers as well.

None of this is meant to excuse the conservative revolution, or counter-revolution, that is critical - if not hostile - toward the press, but to explain it. Something I think Jay wants to do, tries to do, but often fails to do as well as he could because of his own bias.

Posted by: Sisyphus at February 28, 2005 11:32 AM | Permalink

It's funny, I just quoted essentially the same passages from Lemann, in addition to some others, on another weblog. What I see in them is very different:

"If mainstream journalists find it annoying that conservatives think of them as unalterably hostile, they find it just as annoying that liberals think of them as the friend who keeps letting them down. Mainstream journalists want to think that the public is aware of—and respects—the boundaries that separate real journalism from entertainment, and opinion, and propaganda, and marketing."

Note the assumption in this line: "they find it just as annoying that liberals think of them as the friend who keeps letting them down." The assumption seems to be that they are our friends because they are catering to our biases, and letting us down by not catering to our biases enough. But it is equally possibly that we think a functioning democracy needs an independent press, and they are letting us down by not doing their jobs.

And look how Keller describes liberal complaints about the press:

"Bill Keller wrote, in an e-mail, “There is a significant liberal antipathy toward the, pardon the expression, mainstream press. . . . Liberals perceive us, or claim to perceive us, as lapdogs of the Bush Administration, instigators of the war in Iraq, sellouts to big business and panderers to red-state prejudices. Some of this is probably disingenuous—calculated Mau-Mauing."

compared to how he describes conservative complaints:

" “Conservatives feel estranged because they feel excluded. They do not always see themselves portrayed in the mainstream press as three-dimensional humans, and they don’t see their ideas taken seriously or treated respectfully. This is something I’ve long felt we should correct, not to pander to red-state readers but because it’s bad journalism to caricature anyone with reductionist portraits and crude shorthand. . . . Portraying conservatives fairly does not mean equal time for creationism. But it does mean, for example, writing about abortion in a way that does justice to the deep moral qualms most Americans have about it. It means trying to understand the thinking of people who regard gay marriage as unacceptable, who worry that gun controls represent an encroachment on their civil liberties.”"

That's Keller for you, and that's why the Washington Post is now a better newspaper than the New York Times. It's even more blatant on TV:

Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC News, whose variegated domain includes cable television, and even blogs, plainly felt that the nightly news broadcast needs to have its red-state credentials in order. He said of NBC’s new anchor, Brian Williams, “He’s a great journalist, a great reporter. Having said that, he’s a huge nascar fan, has been since his father took him to the track when he was a kid. He cares a lot about his faith. He wants to take the broadcast on the road a lot. He was on the road the whole week before the inauguration. Brian does get it. He once did a story on Cabela’s”—the superstore chain for hunters. “A lot of the people in the newsroom said, ‘Gee I didn’t know about that.’ But he did. And many of our bureaus did. We’re not just the Northeast Corridor.” One doesn’t get the sense that Shapiro worries about the possibility that NBC’s anchor might be out of touch with the values and concerns of residents on the Upper West Side.

It makes me furious. It's like we don't exist--even though most of our complaints are the complaints that the Columbia Jorunalism Reivew makes daily, while their complaints are....from earlier in the same article:

During a day I spent there last month, Ann Marie Lipinski, the Tribune’s editor-in-chief, handed me a copy of a large, ostentatiously grand, and dignified color photograph of President Reagan’s funeral service that the paper had run, showing President Bush speaking from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral to a big audience. She asked me if I could figure out what someone might find objectionable about it; I tried for a minute and gave up. “Think!” Lipinski said. “Keep trying. You’re not being paranoid enough here.” I thought some more, and I still couldn’t figure it out. “So, Don Wycliff, our public editor”—whose job is to deal directly with reader complaints—“received five phone calls saying that the Arab sitting in the front row”—indeed, there was a man in a burnous visible in the audience—“is sitting with his legs crossed so that his foot is pointing at Bush, which is a sign of disrespect in the Middle East. These readers interpreted the photo to mean that the Tribune is anti-Bush. Do you know any editor who, upon seeing that picture, in a million years—I mean, look at that picture!....A few days before my visit, the Tribune’s Sunday magazine had published a memoir by a woman who had been unable to get health insurance because she suffers from depression. Lipinski walked across her office to her desk and played back a voice-mail message she had received in response to the story. A woman’s voice said, “I’m really quite disgusted with the article on the uninsured. I think it’s very socialistic. Health care is not a right in this country. We are not Sweden and we are not Canada. I do not like these heart-tugging stories about people who don’t have health care. . . . Are you a socialist? . . . I do not appreciate these insipid little stories that say, ‘Oh, this poor person who doesn’t have health care.’ . . . I know friends and family who are really upset with the leftist tendencies of your coverage.” At this point, the voice-mail system timed out; it sounded as if the woman would gladly have kept going.

I want them to cover the Maher Arar case and extraordinary rendition; they want them not to run a picture where one member of the audience might not be showing Bush proper homage, or to write stories about people who don't have health care because that's socialist. But there complaints are "because they feel excluded" and mine are "mau-mauing". It's infuriating. And so, so contrary to their self-interest that all sorts of inappropriate analogies come to mind--Stockholm Syndrome, battered wife syndrome, Neville Chamberlain. They are alienating their real audience--their actual subscribers; the big dailies are in the deep blue big cities--in the vain hope that they can win over Rush Limbaugh listeners.

Even Lemann falls into this trap at the end:
"Journalism that is inquisitive and intellectually honest, that surprises and unsettles, didn’t always exist. There is no law saying that it must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn’t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it. This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?"

Some people do. But as I said above, it's like we don't exist. It doesn't even occur to CNN or MSNBC that they could try to appeal to liberals--and that they could try to do so by committing actual journalism rather than finding the left wing equivalent of Joe Scarborough. I mean, I know we lost the election but there are 47 million people who voted for Kerry in this country, and MSNBC's pulling about 500,000 TOPS with this "son of Fox News" routine. They're getting beat by any number of print outlets, to say nothing of the Daily Show (how many people downloaded Jon Stewart's exchange with Tucker Carlson?).

All the talk about weblogs since the Rather scandal has treated the blogsophere as a monolith represented by its conservative side. The left side is either ignored, or assumed to be using the same tactics from the left that the right is using. In fact, it is a completely different animal. Most of it not trying to destroy the press, but to fill in the ever-growing holes in its coverage because of its efforts to appease conservatives, and to do old fashioned political organizing. There is some plain hostility like on the former site mediawhoresonline. But even those sites are more upset with pundits than with journalists. The prototypical liberal complaints about the press are the extremely detailed, and usually correct, complaints on "The Daily Howler" and Brad DeLong's "Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?". It's pretty different from Hugh Hewitt's or Rush Limbaugh's approach.

I would like to send every newspaper editor, TV news director, and ombudsman or public editor in America a copy of these paragraphs from Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech:

"The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us."

You must not only let them alone. You must somehow convince them you let them alone. You know by now that this is no easy task. You have been trying to placate them for three or four decades now. You have pretended there are two sides to every fact, reported every story as if Republicans and Democrats are equally honest and equally extreme regardless of the merits, decided stories' importance based only on how many people are screaming about them how loudly. You have replaced substantive coverage of the issues with trivializing horse race coverage, and replaced all political coverage with schlock trial coverage--if you don't cover politics no one can say you're politically biased. You have replaced investigative journalism and foreign correspondents with endless pundit shows and feature stories--if you don't report any facts you can't be accused of getting the facts wrong. You have made sure conservative pundits outnumber liberals by 3-to-1, both as hosts and as guests. You allowed yourself and the public to be misled about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda. (A recent poll shows that close to half the electorate still believes that Saddam helped arrange the 9/11 attacks and that some of the hijackers were Iraqi, and that 36% believe we have found weapons of mass destruction.) Since the week or two after the Abu GHraib photos became public, most of you have declined to seriously investigate the torture story. You reported on the Swift Boats Veterans as if they were making serious allegations instead of vicious slander, leading a significant percentage of the public to believe them--which may have been decisive in the Presidential election. None of this has worked. They are more hostile than ever to your existence. They are getting you fired because your bosses are terrified of standing up to them.

What will convince them? You must not only cease to call anything to Bush administration does wrong--you must stop reporting any story that might lead readers or viewers to think he is wrong. Nor will neutrality suffice: you must report stories that show him to be right. You must place yourself avowedly with them, in deeds as well as words--reporters who refuse must be fired. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of any taint of opposition to this administration, before they cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from you.

Whereas I just want you to report on the stories you consider most important, and not whatever everyone else is talking about that week. I know it is unrealistic to expect you to sort out which politicians are truthful and which are not, but I would like you to narrow the range of acceptable lies. I would like you to evaluate candidates on some basis other than how much money they have raised and what "Democratic sources" and "Republican sources" say about their electability. I would like you to focus more on the torture issue than on Janet Jackson's boob, and more on the genocide in Darfur than on Michael Jackson's trial, and more on Pakistan's nuclear black market than Kobe Bryant's trial. Of these, only the last is really a dealbreaker.

Posted by: Katherine at February 28, 2005 1:24 PM | Permalink

I stand pretty close to where Sisyphus stands on this, but I bring a tremendously different perspective to the table. While I lack his historical understanding of the press and issues of the press, I think I can bring an understanding of why it is the way it is.

Much has been made lately of 'red' and 'blue' and of the culture war and counter culture and counter counter culture. But the essence is that religion and philosophy ask, address, and answer the same types of questions...the nature of the world, the nature of man, what is right, what is wrong, what I should do, what path should I take. How those topics and questions get answered defines how we see and interact with the world.

The 'religious right' believes what it believes, and knows why it believes what it believes. The 'secular left' also believes what it believes, but doesn't necessarily know exactly why it believes what it believes. I say that without meaning offense to either group, although both sides could rightly claim offense. As a thought experiment, see if you can see where the 'other' could be offended.

But the point is that the secular left is governed by philisophical beliefs to a much greater extent than religious beliefs. But left and right go much deeper than politics. The political left and right grow out of philisophical left and right. The 'right' tends to focus on the fact that the left is secular rather than religious, and given their religious perspective, there for wrong. But that is insufficient. The more lefty left tends to think that their philisophical perspective is superior to the 'ignorant' religious beliefs of the right. But that religion v philsophy debate is largely irrelevant. What is truly important is not whether God or philosophy guides your beliefs, but what your beliefs really are.

I emphasized the 'lefty left' because the vast majority of people, on both sides, are not entirely in one camp or the other, and indeed some (myself included) are in neither. Most people have at least some religous influence on their conception of right and wrong, but also some philisophical influence. There are degrees of influence...a born again Christian is different than a 'devout' Christian is different than a 'goes to service every week Christian' is different than a 'goes to Church every now and again' Christian, is different from a 'Christmas and Easter' Christian is different from a 'lapsed' Christian. Indeed a Southern Baptist is most often different than a Lutheran or a Catholic. The same spectrum from 'devout' to 'kinda sorta' is on the left, as well as subtle differences in 'denomination' exist on the left. But what both sides pay little attention to is exactly what it is that unifies the left...it is not philosophy, it is a particular philosophy...even though most have never heard of it.

The left is unified by Kant and his intellectual heirs. That is the common thread. The right tends to focus on the political/economic theory derivations from Kant (socialism), but that is not the most important point. While socialism/communism has been discredited by reality in places like the former Soviet Union and today's North Korea, the Kantian philisophical underpinnings of it survive. This is not to say that anyone on the left side of the aisle is a socialist. But their conceptions of right and wrong come from the same philosophy. They may not arrive at the same place politically/economically, but they do start at the same place philisophically. And most have never even heard of Kant. But there are lots of Kantian influences including the schools, and the media. Indeed, these days, parents are often a significant source of Kantian philosophy. The 60's counter culture was Kantian.

The problem is that one part of that is thinking that it is 'inclusive' and 'tolerant' and everyone is entitled to 'their own truths'...but they aren't inclusive (as demonstrated by the existance of an excluded right) and only people who start with the same philisophical foundation and arrive at someplace philisophically compatible are 'tolerated'. Trying telling a PC crowd that PC is wrong. I don't mean to be 'bashing' only the left here...I have comparable differences with the right. But that gets us to how all this relates to the press.

The press is overwhelmingly predominated by people who are on 'the left' Not necessarily the radical left, but more left than right...more philisophical (that is Kantian) than 'Christian' conceptions of morality. Again, not that there are no journalists who identify themselves as Christians...just that they also have a more than typical dose of Kant. While there is certainly some deliberate bias on both left and right, I think the big problem is that virtually all the journalists who are trying to be 'objective' have a very Kantian view of objective and Kantian perspectives on right and wrong. Try finding a reporter in the elite media (ABCBNBS, NYT, WaPo, LAT) who believes abortion is murder rather than a woman's right to her body or one who thinks any form of gun control is a violation of civil liberties, or that affirmative action is racial discrimination and always horribly wrong. The point is that there is a 'pressthink' (I'm not using the term the way Jay Rosen does) and it is compatible with the left, and incompatible with the right. The press is leftists trying to be fair, rather than a reflection of the full spectrum of Americans trying to be fair.

If there is any form of 'affirmative action' needed in the elite media, it is one of intellectual diversity. I assume that Jay Rosen knows huge numbers of journalists...how many born again Christians are in the bunch? Of those, how many are in backwater tiny local news outlets and how many are in the 'elite' media?

Liberals see Fox News and the Washington Times as 'Conservative' which is entirely different from 'Conservatives trying to be fair journalists' But when a big slice of America watches network news or reads the big papers, they clearly see 'liberals trying to be fair journalists' and label it the 'liberal media' They aren't any more or less wrong that than people who see the other way. The problem is that both groups come from fundamentally different foundations. We are all inherently blind to our own biases...but alien biases stand out. I include myself in that too...although my biases are in neither of the two camps we are discussing...which helps me see both sides the way most cannot. And I want to clarify...I am not talking about the editorial pages, I am talking about the news.

Now I am moving away from news into opinion, but it is to make a point. Take for instance a man I personally despise, but he is a well known and polarizing figure....Bill O'Reilly. Right or Left? The real answer is neither...both 'sides' see him on the other because differences stand out more than similarities. But he really is in the middle in the way I defined it. He is a Christian (I think) and seems to be genuinely influenced by his religion but he also has a very large dose of Kantian philosophy. AFAIK, he supports 'a woman's right to choose' (I put that in quotes because it is very much the left's way of framing the issue rather then the right's) and civil unions and his explanation of why is strongly Kantian. Not exactly 'conservative' positions. I don't think I have to clarify for this audience why the 'left' sees him as 'right' But fundamentally, along the spectrum from Very Christian/Not Kantian to Not Christian/Very Kantian he is somewhere near the middle. I think that is the root of his popular ratings...he speaks in the middle language of most Americans with both religious and Kantian influences. He is obviously not a news journalist but an opinion 'journalist'. But that was necessary to see his biases openly without the deliberate masking by news journalists. My point is that virtually every news journalist is to the philisophical left of O'Reilly...and believe it or not, O'Reilly is somewhere near the middle, albeit probably to the right of the middle as opposed to the left. Another important thing to note is that I am speaking philisophically, not politically. Left and Right go far, far deeper than politics. I don't know where O'Reilly stood on the last Presidential election (I don't watch him, nor care what he thinks) but if I had to guess, he was a wishy-washy kinda reluctant Bush supporter. I would guess he was in the mushy middle...which (if true) is a testament to how centrist he is give how polarizing the last election was.

So to go to Jay Rosen's long term commentary on the Bush Administration's press policy...this President is treating the press as hostile. Healthy for democracy or not, it is largely true. That comes from two places. There is a trend in the media someome described as going from watchdog to attack dog. But there is also a predominantly left perspective in the press...the 'bias' issue. Both are at least partially true...they are not mutually exclusive. Thus we saw some gotcha journalism with President Clinton, but the members of the media could really sympathize with him too. He was one of their own, philisophically. Clinton is a good example opposite O'Reilly. They are each about equally left or right of the center. Clinton is still a religious man, but he is more influenced by Kantian morality than Christian morality. The point is that while the press played gotcha with Clinton, they shared perspectives, they could sympathize with Clinton, they saw the world through similar lenses. They wanted to believe him and they 'felt his pain'

That cannot be said with regard to President Bush. There is still the gotcha element...but now they fundamentally disagree with him about virtually everything. They honestly try to keep their biases out of their reporting, but the clash in philisophical perspectives still shines through. I don't think the President had much of a choice in the matter. If he had truly and deeply engaged the press the way JFK (the original, not the 2004 version) did, the press would have destroyed him. He wouldn't be sitting in the Oval Office today. Stiff arming the 'mainstream' press is a political necessity for this President. His message could not survive the filters of this press. He had to both avoid them (to minimize damage) and go around them (to get his message out). Much has been made in the media about Dean collecting 300,000 emails. By the time that happened, the President had over 3 million, and eventually got to 6 million emails. But Dean was lauded for 'recognizing the potential of the Internet' But no one in the press noticed that Bush collected ten times more...largely because it wasn't them, their friends, family and associates getting the emails. I recognize that campaign emails and news are fundamentally different. But the President's campaign realized very early on that he had to go around the press to be heard. That says something about the President, but it also says a lot more about the press.

I think one of the longer term trends is that the 'news' is starting to cater to their markets. The New York Times is very close to sacrificing its 'newspaper of record' label. They do not reflect America nearly so much as they reflect the upper West Side. The same can be said of WaPo and LAT. They are becoming deep blue big city papers. The USA Today may not be as 'serious' a newspaper as the NYT, but it is not attacked as much by the right, and stands up better to those attacks....it is closer to reflecting the center than the NYT is. I am not sure that is a good thing, but it is likely to continue...as the center-right subscriptions of papers like the NYTs fall, they will more and more find themselves feeling the pressure from their left side of the aisle reader-constituents.

Posted by: Blanknoone at March 1, 2005 11:15 PM | Permalink

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

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"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

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The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...

Jay-- thanks for the summary. I'm a nite owl too, so it looks like I get first dibs on the response. I like the the Suskind quote; I liked it so much I had quoted it in my December essay on rage against the media. :-) I think it's an important point to consider when we press-thinkers where our media criticism hat. With the {elite|mainstream} media, we want to be careful to mend it, not end it. That explains why I was sticking up for the Times at the WebCred conference vs. the blogsmarm in the room.

For the Stuck At the Gates piece which you cited, I put on my standalone journalist hat, and tried contacting Eileen, as well some of the Kos researchers on this case this month. One of the curious points, brought up by SusanG on Daily Kos, was the irony of them being pseudonymous, trying to out another quasi-reporter's quasi-pseudonymity. There is obviously no comparison, but it's an interesting parallel. I'm not sure what I would have learned, but clearly the conditions were not in place for this story to amplify in 2004.

To address Eric Boehlart's point on the silence of the media, I just wanted to offer a slight amendment to your summary. Indeed, Eileen alerted Dan Froomkin, but bear in mind what Froomkin wrote the next day: "Within the press corps, Gannon is known for asking softball questions." Wow. It's amazing how what seems quite normal to the press corps is a big surprise to the rest of us.

I have a practical question for PressThink: do we agree that, if the WH Press has turned into a circus (as Dana Milbank charges), and this is an affront to democracy, can we get back on the path to normality by demanding some transparency as to who's who in the press room?

And I also have a theoretical question for PressThink: Have we reached the absurd end of public/advocacy journalism? Or, can you salvage it by writing off this example as some sort of bastard offspring, calling it "puppet journalism"?

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 3:52 AM | Permalink

That is a stunningly coherent summary of an enormous subject. Required reading for anyone who is trying to figure out where Gannon/Guckert fits into the bigger picture.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at February 25, 2005 10:07 AM | Permalink

Prof. Rosen, To be quite honest I'm not particularly sympathetic to your viewpoint on this subject or at least my perception thereof. I am curious however as to the charge that's been bandied about as to Mr. Gannon being a "fake" journalist. If I may be so bold as to ask what exactly in your expert opinion constitutes a legitimate journalist? Is there some certification process similar to the bar examination which attorneys take or medical boards that doctors must pass?

Posted by: MB at February 25, 2005 11:07 AM | Permalink

in response to Corn. the problem with Gannon in the briefing room is not that he is a conservative with obvious biases. the biggest question, which i see some of your readers are getting at here is what does qualify you to be in that room? if Maureen Dowd of the NTY is refused a press pass and she has been covering the White House since 1986 then why does Gannon rate an seat?

the second issue you do not touch on is Gannon's involvement with the Plame scandal. how did he manage to see the documents? who gave them to him?

these are questions that we have yet to have answered. the bloggers will keep digging. hopefully they will find something.

Posted by: juls at February 25, 2005 11:20 AM | Permalink

MB, I must indulge your question:
In reaction to the initial charges of being an imposter, the person resigns, and his organization he's affiliated with doesn't back him up, and then that organization folds... That sounds to me like a plea of nolo contendre. Now that Gannon's website is back up, he is either completely without shame, or his handlers have suggested that he stay in the news and keep running inteference.

But if you were wise, you might look through Rosen's writings to see if he ever said anything like "professionalization is obsolete." That would be an interesting point of inquiry.

For the Plame connection, the researchers on Daily Kos are continuing to look into this at Propagannon.

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 12:46 PM | Permalink

Jon, I appreciate you comments. Admittedly I haven't followed the Gannon affair all that closely. My question to Prof. Rosen was instigated in that I've read or heard the term "fake" journalist applied to Mr. Gannon (or whatever his real name is) about a half-dozen times in times in the past two days. It may in fact be true but I'm not entirely clear who qualifies as a legitimate journalist and who doesn't. Now if Mr. Gannon was simply accused of practicing fradulent (ala Jayson Blair or other recent examples) or otherwise sub-standard journalism then I've no argument with that. As far as Mr. Gannon's resignation I could just as easily attribute that to the seamier details of the story (gay websites, male prostitution, etc.).

Posted by: MB at February 25, 2005 2:45 PM | Permalink

Good things come to those who wait. While the rest of the MSM and the bloggers have been tracking Gannon/Guckert's rise and fall and rise again, at least in blog form. See, http://www.jeffgannon.com. PressThink puts it in context and considers its deeper meanings.

I agree that the affair it is of a piece with the overall contempt for the press exhibited by the Bush Administration. Gannon/Guckert was another in a series of "can't lose" political ploys aimed at multiple targets. Rove is a deep, multi-level thinker, a supreme and cynical operative who figures first how a tactic will break out, then how the opposition response to the tactic will play, and then finally, how the coverage of the back-and-forth will play. So he prefers to set the entire agenda. Gannon/Guckert fires first at Democrats, and then the ensuing stink-bomb contaminates the entire press corps. The starting premise is not merely to decertify the press; it is also to discredit it. Gannon/Guckert's very presence in the midst of legitimate journalists underscores the Administration's ultimate point -- that every journalist is a closeted Gannon/Guckert.

Never mind the fact that he was a fraud and a Republican plant. In the Rove universe a lie is a good thing if it reveals a hidden truth about an enemy. The righteous indignation from MSM is received as a manifestation of inherent liberal bias, and MSM's self-loathing, preening nature. Look at how they carry on so. And its cruder than that. The falsity and fraud at the heart of the Gannon/Guckert matter, doesn't matter. The Swift Boat Veterans didn't need to be credible to serve their purpose. The issue wasn't their veracity, the issue was some vague, unarticulated "sense of unease" about Kerry. Kerry presented a rational front to the world that collided with the character drawn in the Republican script. So the Swift Boat distortions, while false in an objective sense, actually revealed Kerry's "true" nature. In that weird false-light, Kerry conformed. Maybe Gannon/Guckert's cotton-ball lobs to the Administration were over the top, but wasn't he just doing what "they" all do, albeit without the professionally-trained ability to conceal bias? While PressThink may subject this affair to some serious and thoughtful debate, in the talkradio echo-chambers, the "debate" has already mutated back toward the usual state of liberal bias in the press.

Gannon/Guckert served a purpose, in that he held up a mirror to the MSM's hypocrisy. Rubbish. Hogwash. But such slop has become a staple of the American diet, and there is a growing market for it. And that is the real root of the rot in MSM. In its consolidated, stock-price driven form, MSM must pursue Fox's ratings, even if that means eating their own, or letting the Gannon/Guckerts in. It is hard to imagine a legitimate American news editor anywhere who could stomach a Gannon/Guckert. But its equally hard to imagine an American News VP anywhere who wouldn't quake at the thought of being frozen out by the Bush Administration, or being boycotted by conservatives. The signs of this MSM trailing after the Fox Market are too numerous to mention. Look at Brian Williams' somber tone and message in the NBC Nightly News commercials, which might have come directly from Frank Luntz's Playbook: "We get half an hour a night in our business and our obligation is to answer a critical question coming right out of the box: Is my world safe? Is my family safe? Is my nation safe?" I dunno Brian, maybe we better ask Bush.

Jay has identified a real problem for MSM, but is there any will to do more than discuss it?

Posted by: Mark J. McPherson at February 25, 2005 4:30 PM | Permalink

My question is, why has elite media been happy accepting whatever the WH has been dishing out until now? Look at transcripts of the Clinton era and you will see many Gannons, some representing major media outlets. Why has the press decided they will die on this hill when this sort of thing has been going on since before GWB? PS: I don't think MSM will die on this hill, since history has proven that whenever a spotlight has been shown on the press, the press suffers. The last thing the elite media wants is an investigation of the private/financial dealings of their members. Which is why I'm hoping for a congressional investigation of the entire WH press.

Posted by: paladin at February 25, 2005 5:09 PM | Permalink

There's little difference between this and what the Creel Committee -- including the "Father" of professional journalism, Walter Lippmann, and the "Father" of public relations, Edward Bernays -- did with Woodrow Wilson in nudging America into World War I. Of course, there was no blogosphere back then and certainly no PressThink. The (perceived) righteousness of the event doesn't change the nature of the manipulation.

Posted by: Terry Heaton at February 25, 2005 5:46 PM | Permalink

I just thought I'd answer a few points before I head down to the Big Apple for the weekend. Gotta see those Gates in the park-- before their Gatekeepers tear them down!

to MB:
I'm sorry, imposter is the wrong word. Imposter implies that he actually fooled people that he was doing the job (like Frank Abagnale did). Gannon/Guckert never fooled anyone.

No one has suggested that it requires a "certification board"; To be a reporter is quite simple: Ask questions to learn information. What you've learned, add as value to the stories you tell. This is fundamental to storytelling, whether news or history or fiction. Gannon the "reporter" did neither. He asked questions, not to learn anything, but to smear people, and to try and rattle the other reporters. And much of his reporting did not add any value; he, and the rest of the Talon News organization, copy-and-pasted from White House press releases and from other journalists' work. (see Ron Brynaert's research on this).

So certainly that's "substandard journalism." But what was fake about him was that he wasn't even trying. He skipped right ahead to the big leagues.

to Anna's comment:
Yes, the Nashua Advocate very diligently found an earlier date for the media's awareness of Gannon's fake reporting-- in summer 2003

to Mark's comment:
"Jay has identified a real problem for MSM, but is there any will to do more than discuss it?"

This is Jay's board, and we should celebrate him here, but credit is also due to the people that Jay cites: Dan Froomkin, Dana Milbank, Frank Rich, Eric Boehlart, Ron Suskind, who have been on this beat before. Obviously, what's different about Jay is that PressThink is a bit more interactive. Dan Froomkin could have kickstarted this effort on the Nieman Watchdog sight, but maybe Froomkin/Nieman don't yet have the bloggo Q-factor that Rosen/PressThink does. I think that has to change. There's a bit of a bias towards blog-happy sites and away from efforts that don't meet any of the classic blog definitions.

to paladin's comment:
"Which is why I'm hoping for a congressional investigation of the entire WH press."

Haven't we learned anything from the distributed research efforts of Media Matters and Daily Kos? There's a lot we can do short of getting a Congressional subpoenas. Really all that we (we being armchair citizen-investigators) need is a list of who's who in the White House Press Corps. That's what Eileen was asking for last year-- the famed blog post that only Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post read.

All:
If people can stop using the terms elite press and mainstream media interchangeably; and define them if you use them. When I hear someone complaining about "the mainstream media" it just says to me that they are repeating somebody else's talking points. For example, which does the Wall Street Journal fall in? Peggy Noonan keeps railing on against the MSM, so clearly the WSJ must be elite. But there are other subgroups of the press, after all, that don't come out of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center's playbook. Try these on for size: the corporate media. The Gannett empire. Small town news. The Networks.

Jay:
From the department of all-good-things-should-be-taken-in-moderation. Any chance you can get some apprentices-- I guess they are still called grad students-- to help moderate these discussions? Call them pressthinkers or gatepeekers or something. Flat-threaded discussions such as these need some moderation to answer questions and proactively deal with the loose ends. This one's a favor, on me.

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 25, 2005 6:42 PM | Permalink

Sorry Jon, I have no idea who "Eileen" is, but I do know that two Democrat Congressmen are asking for Guckert/Gannon's personal notes to be presented for their perusal. Who has more power, "Eileen" or US Congressmen? Do I need to ask? As for the definition of MSM, please don't insult us. You know and we know.

Posted by: paladin at February 25, 2005 7:25 PM | Permalink

The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft's tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.

I'm sure that this reporter, upon meeting Ashcroft, would do a respectful, professional interview, producing a profoundly objective, truly balanced story. After all, he is so open-minded about his subject matter...

Posted by: Foobarista at February 25, 2005 7:40 PM | Permalink

Jay only errs in not going back far enough. There was PressThink back in the Clinton years which in my view presages Bush's revolutionary leap forward. Part of it was the self-conscious "brazen it out" strategy, which was aware of the news cycle and how to make it work for politicians, another part was the use of quasi-journalist operatives like the rather slimy Sid Blumenthal.

This is not to say that Bush's relationship with the press poses no new or interesting questions, but perspective is needed.

The whole process has been evolving for some time.

Posted by: Brian at February 25, 2005 10:36 PM | Permalink

I'm sorry, but I'm missing this. Is there a "there" there? The White House, or G.W. Bush, or Republicans in general have opened communication to their constituents; as anyone can, and others do.

G.W.Bush has already stated his position regarding the machinations conducted in the Press briefing room and "White House briefings", in clear small words.

So, there is a person acting as a reporter not accepted by other reporters. He is gay (apparently,) he is asking softball questions (obviously,) McClellan knows him (at least to the extent of calling him Jeff,) ... all of this leads where?

That the people in the room are offended? That the people not in the room are offended? That the public dialog suffers? (If so, how?) That people in the room should have some formal vetting process? (If so, who gets to decide the criteria?)

Maybe this is a Karl Rove operation: It seems to distract, but does not seem to lead anywhere that I can discern.

Posted by: John Lynch at February 25, 2005 10:52 PM | Permalink

As a historian, I can confidently say this isn't a new story. All recent presidents have felt the need to paddle on the edge of the press-stream, closer to where ordinary people live and think. All recent presidents have sought direct contact with the American voter and citizen. All recent presidents have wanted unmediated communication.

Rather than interpret this presidential desire for unmediated communication as a negative development, why not ask yourselves why this is happening. Why do presidents and other elected officials want to talk directly to ordinary people? Why do they want to bypass the prestige media?

If your response to this question assumes elected officials will seek to obscure and distort – to “spin,” in your jargon -- then you probably believe the prestige media is needed to uncover and contextualize presidential language. However, if you believe that presidential motives are more benign, perhaps benevolent, that presidents desire to communicate and not distort, then uncovering and contextualizing is not necessary. If presidents are thought of as trustworthy, direct communication between a president and the American people avoids interpretative distortions by the media.

Similarly, if you assume the media seeks to distort and obscure – to spin the presidential message to fit a unconscious, or conscious political point of view – then you probably want the president to speak directly to the people and avoid media distortion. However, if you believe that media’s motives are benign and perhaps benevolent, that the prestige media earnestly seeks to communicate and not distort, then what the media brings to presidential messages will only enhance their meaning, providing context and clarity. In this case, bypassing the media through direct communication isn’t necessary.

Lets take this one step further, toward the recipients of communication, the American people. If you assume that ordinary people will misconstrue news that is not mediated or interpreted, then unfiltered communication between a president and ordinary Americans is necessarily a bad thing.

But if you assume that ordinary people can adequately understand presidential rhetoric and intent, then direct communication between a president and the people is a good thing.

Perhaps the Gannon saga boils down to the media's collective, average opinion of ordinary Americans. Perhaps it is not a story about de-legitimizing the press as much as it is a story about re-legitimizing ordinary Americans. Furthermore, perhaps it is a story about the media’s opinion of its own, and presidential, motives.

Just a few thoughts from an outsider to your media world.

Kris

Posted by: Kris at February 25, 2005 10:53 PM | Permalink

This will interest only a few of the heartier users. I put it together for myself as I begin to collect threads for the Book. A brief sketch, with links, of PressThink's earlier attempts to piece together the Bush White House's strategy of de-certifying the national press corps, beginning in fall of 2003

It started, as I said in my post, with John Ashcroft: National Explainer. (September 16, 2003, shortly after PressThink's debut.) Why Karen Ryan Deserved What She Got (March 31, 2004) was my second look at the Bush Administration's assault on the practice of journalism-- the impersonation of a reporter by PR woman Ryan.

In a follow up, Flacks Cannot Say They're "Reporting" Anymore, (April 20, 2004) I told of pressuring the Public Relations Society of America to either declare what Ryan did wrong, or say out loud that they wouldn't. (They did, meekly.)

My first look at the Bush Thesis, which I consider an imaginative leap in press relations, was A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? (April 13, 2004) I was asking: if Bush meant what he said about "just another special interest," why would he call a press conference at a rocky moment? That led to Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That."(April 25, 2004) where I explained the Bush Thesis, and the de-certification impulse, in more depth.

I also learned something from the reactions. Many on the cultural right cheered my report on the Bush Thesis. They saw it as just, and just what was needed. They loved it that Bush stood up to journalists. (You represent the American public? I don't think so.) For a time, Bush to Press was PressThink's most heavily read post. The put down made sense to them. They saw no problem with it.

That reaction was one thing that led to There's Signal in That Noise: The White House, the Reality Principle and the Press (June 23, 2004): "Not engaging with opponents' arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes-- all are of a piece with not letting the 'liberal media' cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House."

I examined the cultural front and the Right's complaints with the press in Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes (Oct. 4, 2004), which tried to distinguish between those "frustrated and angry with the traditional news media," who want changes in the institution, and another group, "posing as critics of bias," who simply want to discredit and destroy it.

On. October 28, 2004, I was quoted by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times, "I think there's a campaign under way to totally politicize journalism and totally politicize press criticism... It's really an attack not just on the liberal media or press bias, it's an attack on professionalism itself, on the idea that there could be disinterested reporters."

In The Coming Apart of An Ordered World: Bloggers Notebook, Election Eve (Oct. 31, 2004) I told of getting phone calls from editors alarmed about the coordinated attacks they were feeling as the election drew closer. I also nominated Ron Suskind's New York Times magazine article, "Without a Doubt" for campaign piece of the year-- a heroic effort to describe the "leap" in thinking that the Bush team has made.

Then on the day after the 2004 election I wrote Are We Headed for an Opposition Press? "The Bush White House has the national press in a box. As with so many other situations, they have changed the world and allowed the language of the old world to keep running while exploring unchallenged the fact of the new. The old world was the Fourth Estate, and the watchdog role of the press, the magic of the White House press conference. It was a feeling that, though locked in struggle much of the time, journalists and presidents needed each other. Although it was never put this way, they glamourized Washington politics together, and this helped both.

"In Bushworld, all is different."

Now the trail has led to Jeff Gannon, and In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press. As far as I'm concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 11:09 PM | Permalink

Jay,

I've seen, and in many cases participated in, the threads you reference. To me, it seems consistent. The president has stated that dialogue does not require any particular fixed mechanism. In particular, he states that the formal "press briefings" are using assumptions that he does not accept. If any particular forum does not work for him (or anyone else) there are enough other mechanisms to maintain dialogue. The one discordant note in the threads you reference is the one on

"Not engaging with opponents' arguments, not permitting discordant voices a hearing, not giving facts on the ground their proper weight, not admitting mistakes-- all are of a piece with not letting the 'liberal media' cloud your thinking. This is the Bush way. And disengaging from the press has been a striking innovation of this White House."

To discard a particular mechanism is not the same as ignoring discordant voices. Although the voices in the discarded mechanism may perceive it that way.

Posted by: John Lynch at February 25, 2005 11:26 PM | Permalink

I think some transparency as to who's who in the press room is probably a good idea, Jon.

Your phrase public/advocacy journalism shows me you do have scant feeling for the thing you are either salvaging, or writing off or asking me to put out of its misery or.... I cannot relate to it, and frankly I have no idea what your question is about.

The proposals, projects, arguments and ideas that came together under the heading of public journalism in the 1990s do not need salvaging; they do not have to be justified all over again. They are in the historical record, and in the minds of the people who were influenced by public journalism. I wrote a book intended to capture them.

Mike Phillips, for example, editorial development director for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, whose letter I published a few days ago, is a person who was involved. Public journalism failed (to decisively change the press) but it did not fail with Mike Phillips and now he oversees 21 newsrooms and can influence them all.

I don't argue with people about "advocacy journalism" anymore. I did it for 10 years and no one learned a thing. If a team took a serious look at it now--the public journalism movement, its people, their key ideas--I believe they would find that it anticipated a lot of what is happening today with citizen journalism, that it was attuned earlier than the rest of the profession to the dangers of the disconnect between Americans and their press, that it focused far too much on the limited possibilities for changing mainstream newsrooms, and was, in fact, too timid in its demands, even though it was denounced for overturning all that was safe and good in American journalism.

Plus, public journalism completely missed the Internet. Born too early. When people tell me public journalism (civic journalism) failed I tend to agree with them. But it got way, way further than most ideas for changing the press ever do.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 25, 2005 11:46 PM | Permalink

Kris: Whomever you are, that was a good reminder of what it means to keep an open mind. I like your more detached perspective.

John Lynch: I think you and I have fundamentally different reads on the Bush presidency and what it is about. Given that, we're not going to see the same thing when we look at a Gannon.

I believe you can make an argument for the necessity of Bush shifting strategies with members of the press, and deciding to close their shown down, and bring the presidency into a post-press era. I would not be making them, but they can be made. But then you would be describing the moves of a political innovator, which is what I believe George W. is in this area.

Telling me nothing's different is just a lot of noise. Goes back further than Bush? Yes, Brian. There was a lot of shifting around during the Clinton years. It's still plenty valid to tell a Bush story about the changing fortunes of the big time political press.

But in the end, it's just one story. I don't think it's exclusively correct. I do think it's worth putting puzzle pieces together.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 12:08 AM | Permalink

James Guckert was a fake journalist -- but he was (and as far as we know still is) a real prostitute

This very salient fact hasn't been discussed by anyone in here as yet. Alleged "liberals" like David Corn are avoiding it like the plague. But facts, as Ronald Reagan so memorably noted are "stupid things." And the "stupid fact" du jour concerns an administration that has expended enormous amounts of time and money to oppose same-sex marriage and prevent Buster Bunny from coming into casual contact with lesbian couples. Yet this same administration has no qualms whatsoever ABOUT putting a male whore in the white house press room !

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 12:11 AM | Permalink

I completely disagree with this article. Btw, I am not a journalist. I think Bush and his administration can answer questions of whoever they like. The media are the ones that have put themselves in this position, by their constant refusal to present straight information.

Why should Bush et al cater to people who are going to attack him and misrepresent him right off the bat? They want to get information out the way they want it and they have a right to do that, indeed an obligation to do so with voters like me. You can still talk about the Patriot Act all you want, indeed you are here. You can watch it on local TV and read and report your opinions, and take it apart then.

After watching Helen Thomas scream left wing propaganda in the WH press room for thirty years, and seeing Bush attacked so severely since before he came in office, it is hard to have much sympathy for this conversation. The reason you guys are being cut out is right here in this thread, all these assumptions and biases. The best evidence, for example, shows that McClellan didn't have anything to do with allowing Gannon into the WH press room. Indeed, he was there under Arie Fleischer. The head of the WH press association said as much, that these passes happen at a much lower level and are regularly given out to a lot of "coconuts". Writers here assume that the WH is doing something crooked. Most normal people fail to see what that is.

This combined with no one in the press complaining about the fact that Hillary Clinton has done the same, refusing to talk to reporters for years now, where is the outrage about that?

And did you know Gannon was gay? Shock gasp gasp!!! Gay gay gay gay, and he was in the WH? Oh my God how can that happen.

Reporters are turning into used car salesman, and all you need to know about why is to read this thread.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 3:42 AM | Permalink

As far as I'm concerned, it is all one story. But I do not pretend to understand it yet.

Of course its all one story --- and its a story in which the "Jay Rosens" and of the world play a leading role. One notices that the words "Eason Jordan" are missing from Rosen's discussion of how the White House and its operatives are attempting to delegitimize the press. Nor are the words "Sarah Boxer" found therein.

Yet Rosen played a leading role in the controversies over both journalists by acting as the conduit between the "wingnuts" and the "mainstream media" in blowing up complete non-stories into topics of legitimate discussion.

Yet now he complains about how the White House is treating the "legitimate press" as if it doesn't matter.

Gannon and Rosen have one thing in common---ego plays an extremely significant role in what they "publish". It doesn't matter if the story is "legitimate" or not, all that matters is that the story get noticed. How else to explain Rosen's pleasure with being nominated for "best blog" in a group that includes "Powerline" and "Hugh Hewitt" and "Low Culture."

I mean, is this what Rosen is aspiring to in his blog? To turn his media observation blog into the meaningless drivel that emanates from the keyboards of dirtballs like "Hindrocket" and Hewitt, or the snarkfest that is "Low Culture?"

Personally, given the standards to which Rosen supposedly aspires, I'd think he'd be embarrassed to be in this group. But like I said, what Gannon and Rosen have in common is ego and self-promotion above all else.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at February 26, 2005 8:12 AM | Permalink

"And did you know Gannon was gay? Shock gasp gasp!!! Gay gay gay gay, and he was in the WH? Oh my God how can that happen."

Surely Media Mastermind Karl Rove has the answer.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 9:47 AM | Permalink

Jay,
I deeply appreciate your efforts here to frame the Gannon story in relation to some of the larger issues at stake: how the press is not only part of the story, but reflecting on how press codes must change when decertification of the press has been incorporated as a core belief of Bush-era Republicanism.

We have to recognize decertification as an ongoing, and quite advanced process, before we can begin to come to terms with its consequences. Bush Republicans clearly see it as the welcome removal of an opposition filter. Others tend to experience it as the removal of the last shreds of accountability in an already fatally weakened democratic process, as tantamount to rejecting transparency and accountability as core social values, a pseudo-populist demand for authoritarianism.

I used to be quite frustrated in the manner of p.lukasiak in your apparent refusal to call a spade a spade in manners such as these. But I have recently developed more sympathy for your situation. You teach journalism, after all.

Regardless of how the country may go politically, regardless of who triumphs over the next several years, assuming anything beyond disinfotainment survives, our society and our leaders will always have a need for accurate and responsible sources of information about the world around us.

Calling out PR fascists for what they are and tracing their systematic integration into the media infrastructure ala FOX and Sinclair is VERY important, but there are others who do it, such as Thom Hartmann (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1220-20.htm), Tom Engelhardt, and Juan Cole. It MUST be done even more effectively and widely than it has been done so far, but it is also not the ONLY job to be done.

Your work and your blog doggedly stay with the question of how can we do better reporting given the new technological platforms and developing ideological landscape at hand, how can we do this job better and how should we be reconceptualizing this job (or avocation, as some of the long tail models seem to be pushing for)?

We are all challenged when we become implicated in the story we want to report. The discourse of public journalism did have the merit of explicitly facing this challenge in its own preliminary way. It seems to leave us with the same problem that vexes all of these debates: Who are "we"? And who gets to decide? And under what rules will we be forced to make that decision? To what degree does media structure need to be accounted for in the rule-making process? What is the status of individual personal rights vis-a-vis the superhuman corporate version of "human rights" we are all now forced to compete with?

Thanks for your continued effort to continue making sense and to continue trying to communicate in the face of the noise. Even when you don't always take it where I'd prefer you would, you are still making a serious contribution to clarifying the stark challenges that face us all.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 1:22 PM | Permalink

A response for napablogger:

As any number of observers, from George Orwell 60 years ago to I.F Stone 40 years ago, have noted, all governments lie. They fudge and omit. They bury and muffle inconvenient facts. They do this repeatedly, relentlessly, shamelessly. And complicit in those lies are members of the press who respond by acting as obedient transcribers.

And so we end up with a press fearful, as Todd Gitlin has put it, of "detailing the anatomy of official distortion" because they're wary of angering partisans already suspicious of bias.

So what are we left with ? An obsequious stenography that plays into the hands of liars and obfuscators of all stripes -- and that is true no matter who is president.

Thus do reporters turn themselves into parrots of the talking points of the day, unwilling to "undo the folded lie," as W.H. Auden put it, rendered impotent by the outmoded tradition of journalism-as-transcription to confront what Walt Whitman called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons."

And that was before the parody figure "Jeff/Jim Gannon/Guckert" appeared on the scene -- a farce within a farce within a farce.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at February 26, 2005 2:24 PM | Permalink

napablogger,
Guckert is a gay-bashing gay Republican political and sexual prostitute, to be accurate.

It's Bush's support for prostitution of the US government and the media that is revealed here. And the close ties of the band of gay-hating gay Republican brothers to that project. And clearly many Republicans love them for it, as long as they hate anyone like their gay selves. What's not to like in a fellow gay-basher? Don't ask, don't tell. Hey, didn't you guys have a problem with that during the Clinton administration?

The prostitution part is just truth in political advertising. And just to refresh your memory, prostitution is not a sexual orientation or a private preference, it is a profession which involved advertising. Bloggers exposed Guckert's own ad campaign! What privacy does ad copy call for exactly?

"More political prostitutes in the White House Press Room, pronto!" That is your message and your proud of it?

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 3:14 PM | Permalink

I think this is a necessary evil for those whose "beat" is the White House. What is needed is to allow the White House press corps to be stenographers (indeed, the major news organizations should give the job of reporting on WH pronouncements to interns!) but ensure that the truth is provided even more prominence.

In other words, let Candy Crowley journalistically fellate Bush/Cheney....but make sure that Wolf Blitzer always follows her with "For another perspective on this issue, we take you to....."

Posted by: p.lukasiak at February 26, 2005 4:57 PM | Permalink

Is Candy Crowley turning tricks on the side too?

Somehow I doubt it.

And were that the case would the rest of the media retreat from the story in a show of decorous tastefulness?

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 5:49 PM | Permalink

To Steve: thanks for your comments. My problem is that the press lies too, so who is to sort it out? The readers will have to. That is why I think it is ok to have Bush present things the way he wants to, and the press of course is doing the same. The press has become a player, not an objective arbiter. Also, I think yours and Orwell's, Gitlin, etc. view is far too cynical. Most of the time the politicians and the press do not lie, and when they do most of that is not outright lying, it is bias, or spin.

To me what has happened is that the press, starting about with Nixon, has gone from being a watch dog to an attack dog. It really ramped up with Clinton, then with Bush it has just exploded.

I think the discussion really needs to be about, how can the press be more responsible for itself? I mean, I read Howell Raines article in the Atlantic Monthly, and the guy seemed so out of touch with reality it amazed me. He was such an overbearing liberal who thought nothing of imposing his own extremist views on the NY Times news it was amazing. Yet nowhere did I see mainstream journalists criticizing him for that bias. Everyone sort of supported the idea that it was his personality that got him fired, and that Jason Blair was not about bias blindness.

It reminded me of the way male chauvinists used to say derogatory things about women, like asking a woman who got raped what she was wearing, then being shocked that anyone would think it was an inappropriate question. Clueless.

That is the way that most of the press and some people on this thread seem to me, so elitist and out of touch, unconscious.

I think it is ridiculous to say people can't get the information they want, it is all over the place. Also to name Fox and Sinclair like they are controlling the whole world is so over the top. Their numbers don't compare to the networks, or where most people get their news that care to read, from their local papers. They are an alternative point of view that is in a small minority of the overall sources of information.

I don't think much of Gannon, but I don't think much of Helen Thomas, or Howell Raines or Bill Keller either. Sarah McClendon sat in there and asked Clinton about Mena all the time. If we are going to start evaluating reporters by whether they have ever been gay, used drugs, were prositutes, etc, then you have to investigate everyone. Is that the standard now?

What matters is what kind of job are they doing, and Gannon is no worse than a lot of them. I thought Gannon's questions were fine, I do think the Democrats are divorced from reality in a lot of cases, it is a heck of a lot more pertinent than listening to Christiane Amanpour lecture us on how awful we Americans all are.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 6:21 PM | Permalink

Mark Anderson, Barney Frank had a gay prostitution ring out of his own house. No big deal I guess. Byrd used to be KKK.

All the people screaming about Gannon being a gay prostitute are liberals. It really has nothing to do with whether he is a good reporter or not, although I admit it is sleazy. But so is Barney Frank and Robert Byrd as far as I am concerned.

None of that is fair in evaluating whether or not Gannon is a good reporter, and for liberals to leap on this so strongly as they have does not seem like anything other than opportunistic Republican bashing.

It is totally unrelated to what this site is calling "decertification" of the press by Bush. To call it that is another term of propaganda, to slightly exaggerate what Bush is doing in order to push a point of view. Isn't that an attempt by Rosen to "decertify" Bush's view toward the press?

One could go round and round with this, I suppose, but my point is that the question is, is it ok for Bush administration officials to answer questions of whomever they like? To me it seems like if Bush didn't do that he would drown and never get anything done. If Hillary did that she could just write off ever being President because all she would get are questions about all the scandals she has been involved in.

I think what a press site like this ought to be focused on is not how martyred everyone feels by Bush, but on how the press could be more responsible about themselves.

Posted by: napablogger at February 26, 2005 6:34 PM | Permalink

"All the people screaming about Gannon being a gay prostitute are liberals. "

And of course in your throughly corrpt and mendacious world view liberals have no right to speak about anything.

"It really has nothing to do with whether he is a good reporter or not, although I admit it is sleazy. But so is Barney Frank and Robert Byrd as far as I am concerned."

And we all know what happened with Barney Frank, don't we? That was scarcely covered up by the supposedly "liberal medai." Likewise Robert Byrd's reactionary and racist past is part of the public record.

It's his liberal present thatlower life-forms such as yourself with to keep from being discussed.

"None of that is fair in evaluating whether or not Gannon is a good reporter, and for liberals to leap on this so strongly as they have does not seem like anything other than opportunistic Republican bashing."

Why resist the opportunity to kick a pack of scumbags when they're down?

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 6:51 PM | Permalink

I think Bush defenders are caught between minimizing what I have called "de-certification," typically by saying there's nothing new here, or it's not happening, just your imagination... and, in a different kind of response, explaining why de-certification ought to happen, why it's just, logical, and appropriate for Bush to have done it to a (biased) press that amounts to an enemy.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 6:56 PM | Permalink

But putting the multi-facted aspect of Gucky's career to one side, Jay, what's always surprised me about this story is the level of insecurity it discloses about BushCo. Today's media is scarcely bereft of reporters and/or pundits more than willing to defend/ promote anything the White Hosue says or does. The problem is that a George Will, Howie Kurtz or Carl Cameron can't produce the kind of readymade "bites" the White House needs to feed its propaganda into the news cycle. That's what Gucky was there for. But his now famous "lost all touch with reality" line was a vast overplaying of the hand. No sooner did these words leave his lips than the cat was out of the bag.

And then all blogistan discovered that said cat wasn't housebroken.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 7:17 PM | Permalink

I didnt know the Executive Branch was answerable to the Press or MSM. I thought all aspects of the Government was answerable and responsible to the People. The MSM does not represent the people but seems to find time enough to bash all things considered conservative or Republican. Why wouldnt the Executive Branch try to distance the itself from the Press with all the shennanigans going on and with the majority of Americans finding the MSM coverage laughable today. As I have stated before here- many conservatives over the years have emancipated themselves somewhat from the MSM. Not just because of its political slant which has been obvious but also shoddy coverage and assinine subjects ie "Women forced to expose themselves to Koko the Gorilla". Who cares? And who cares about Jeff Gannon???? It is such a non-story when juxtaposed to the YEARS of Left Wing bias by the media and their treatment of Repub. Presidents. If there was an outcry of planted reporters or biased reporters being let into Presidential press room by the MSM over the last 30 years or so and exposing liberal reporters for who they are and who they work for and the overlapping people who pays them ie NPR reporters being paid by the UN to write something or another, then maybe the American people would find an interest in Jeff Gannon. As it is, the American people know who is pushing this story and that tells them everything they need to know. And that is the problem the MSM has created for themselves: They have hated and abused us conservatives long enough and now we choose to empower ourselves.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 26, 2005 7:42 PM | Permalink

"They have hated and abused us conservatives long enough and now we choose to empower ourselves."

Ah yes. Leave it to a Conservative to really know how to play the Victim Card

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 26, 2005 7:45 PM | Permalink

Napablogger,
You can't seem to process the GAY-BASHING gay prostitute part of the story. Was Barney Frank campaigning for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage when a gay prostitution ring was traced to his housekeeper? No.

Was Robert Byrd campaigning for the civil rights act when his membership in the KKK was uncovered? Again, no.

Were BushCo. campaigning (for four years) on "family" values, restoring "dignity" to the White House, and gay-bashing when their Texas Republican delivery boy laid one out over the plate with just a little too much contempt for non-salesmen in the room? They sure as hell were.

This is called suffering the consequences of your actions. Republicans are supposed to be for personal responsibility. But actions speak louder than words. In this administration actions typically contradict the words.

Jim Guckert is the gay-bashing gay prostitute in the press corps who personifies this entire administration's hypocrisy. The administration that can't get a fair shake from the spokespeople they've hired to impersonate reporters.

Also, POLITICAL prostitution as well as sexual. That seems to drop out of your thought process. Practice saying it a few times and it will come to you more easily. POLITICAL prostitute Jeff Guckert. Part of the party organization targeting Plame/Wilson, Daschle and Rather. POLITICAL prostitute.

Apparently your answer is that the press brought political prostitution on themselves? They couldn't repeat Republican talking points effectively enough, so the Republicans had to hire "reporters" to get the PR spin right?

Unfiltered news means "all PR, all the time." Your accusation is enough to make reporters proud. Sadly, they don't do nearly so well in fact, hence the repeated references to stenography in this thread. If wanting a press corps that isn't exclusively comprised of Republican salesmen is a liberal viewpoint, sign me up!

Posted by: Mark Anderson at February 26, 2005 7:49 PM | Permalink

Among Bush's many talents he has a sense for who's weak. Rove has more than a sense; he builds strategy (and theory, which informs the strategy) on it. But they come together very well in assessing weakness.

They saw a weak adversary in the White House press, which cannot fight back in most cases without appearing to be drawn into a partisan struggle, a step that instantly erodes its authority and one that mainstream news organizations are extremely reluctant to take.

So, for example, I think the press should boycott the briefing for a day or two, just to protest the emptying out of it, in the answers that are nothing but the refusal to answer phrased another way.

But even this sort of thing--tame, modest, limited, civilized, and just for a day or two--would freak the bosses out. I doubt the elders of the tribe would recommend it. The council of news organizations, if there were such a thing (of course there isn't) would never vote to approve a strike. Too confrontational.

The press is a political eunuch. Its opponents and attackers understand that fully. That is why they have been so successful in their assault.

The briefing was the oxygen of new information-- some information, some reponsiveness, some back and forth. That flow has been reduced to nothing. Basically, the briefing is dead. It was killed, though.

And that was one space where the press had a foothold, made a habitat. It was one place where executive power could be questioned daily-- not went it felt like it. Now there's less of that.

Bit by bit, space by space, you destroy habitat, cut flow, evacuate the ritual. Certainly it is a process that could be completed in a few years, unless there is opposition.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 26, 2005 10:03 PM | Permalink

See: No excuse for poor journalism:

Now, my anti-Ashcroft credentials are impeccable. They began back in 1998 with hard letters and editorials against his anti-flag-burning amendment. But, if that's the platform you're using to make your case. I'm going to have to stand in your way. While you are correct to decry the way the press has been ill-treated, and correct to score the administration for its behavior, nothing will get better until you address poor journalism. Poor journalism is the problem. The administration's action is the symptom of it.

Posted by: sbw at February 26, 2005 11:51 PM | Permalink

Yes- David E.- we choose to empower ourselves, and funny how you seem to view it from a 'victim' point of view whilst I(the progenitor of the post) merely view it as a liberation and validation of what I have always believed the case to be: Liberal hatred of America and conservative thought perpetuated by the MSM. But why should I expect any less....sadly, it is what I have come expect at all times from the likes of your kind. And I do employ the word 'sadly' in a wise manner here.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 27, 2005 1:32 AM | Permalink

Boycott the briefing? Yeah, throw Bush right into the briar patch.

The briefings have been pointless for years. Staged, scripted events. Gotcha journalism. No president has answered a question he didn't want to in them in eons. I see little point to them other than to allow television cameras to capture the star reporter asking one of the questions. It's like a vanity event.

Oh, news sometimes does emerge from them. Clinton wagging his finger was one. But when Kerry and Bush campaigned basically avoiding the press whenever they could, and doing so without creating any kind of furor with the public, you see that this is a problem that is far beyond Bush's press policy. The last president who had any desire to communicate through press briefings was Bush 41, and other than giving Dana Carvey source tapes to work from I do not see that it accomplished much, in terms of either keeping the public informed or advancing Bush 41's policies. And that was some 13+ years ago.

Oh yes, Jay, making a point you are determined not to listen to and which creates problems for your pet theories is always "noise". Trying to pigeonhole anyone pointing out the historical perspective as "Bush defenders" is also noise, isn't it? It's the loud, handwaving interruption intended to remove that point from discussion. I guess you won't call on me for a follow-up, will you, Jay?

Posted by: Brian at February 27, 2005 1:35 AM | Permalink

"The briefing was the oxygen of new information-- some information, some reponsiveness, some back and forth. That flow has been reduced to nothing. Basically, the briefing is dead. It was killed, though."

Such histrionics. It's like someone mourning the waning of the three-camera sitcom. The WH briefing is dead because public interest in it is next to nil.

Posted by: Brian at February 27, 2005 1:46 AM | Permalink

Dont worry Brian- when we have complaints it is normally defined as hate. If you complain from the other (left) side your 'noise' is suddenly construed as purely 'objective' and therfore contains no bias or hate. For how could any Liberal hate....as they call you a Nazi homophobe, preventor of abortion on demand, right wing suppressor of all that is decent in the world.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 27, 2005 2:23 AM | Permalink

Jay, if the briefing is dead, who killed it? Bush or the press?

Did Hillary kill the press by not granting an interview, for what, years now, except to a very controlled softball interview, and only very few at that?

What responsibility is the press taking for being so one sided, and attack dogs to boot? Is that what the people, the consumers of this press want?

Do people want Eason Jordan accusing people of murder with no evidence because of his biases?

Do people want Howell Raines changing the City Editors copy to make the news sound more "progressive" even though it is factually incorrect, because that is what he did.

What responsibility is the press taking for creating this situation, because they have plenty.

Posted by: napablogger at February 27, 2005 2:33 AM | Permalink

Mark, you are entitled to your opinions but your filter is obvious. This is just my point, I don't want my information from Bush filtered through someone as obviously biased as you are. I would first like to hear from him, and as far as I am concerned the majority of the major media that fill the WH press room and the halls of all the major media have your biases. I am glad that Bush is going around you.

Posted by: napablogger at February 27, 2005 2:44 AM | Permalink

I am not as articulate as some of the people here, but wanted to attempt to give you some... special perspective on the issue.

I am from the 3rd World, and there when you talk about CNN, they will tell you that it is just a mouthing-piece for Bush. And they are watching CNN International which is much more independent than CNN-US that we see here in the US! So you can understand my amusement when I see the so-called MSM lashed at, mostly by conservative Bush supporters.

Of all the comments above, I was struck by the ones by "Kris" and "Steve Lovelady, because they framed the issue in a way that made sense to me. See my understanding of the press in the United States, is that it has to be free, and it does have to stand as an arbiter. And yes, when it does not fulfill that, mechanisms should be in place within the society to call them to order. But free, also means independent of ALL SIDES, and the it's a process that can only work if those calling them to order do not have hidden agendas.

Governments lie, politicians lie, and they all try to frame the debate in a partisan way. The media's job is supposed to be to help us see through the "spin". But with sensationalism, some of that job has been blundered; and with the rising political divide, we have ended up with the RatherGate, and the GannonGate. In the former's respect, bloggers have been quite useful as a regulating group in uncovering the treachery. And I applaud them (or shoudl I say us).

What I do not applaud, however, is the attempt to litteraly destro MSM by many people on the right-wing, who seem - it's my perception - to want all media to be like FOX News. In other words, it seems to me like the agenda of some of the conservative bloggers is not to make the media get to the truth, but to get to THEIR truth... the very same thing they are accusing the left to be doing. Now the "CROSSFIRE"'s and other theater-debates on the MSM simply illustrate that, in fact, what the MSM has had to do to please everybody, is to try to over-pander to BOTH sides, which has the result of losing perspective on the simple truth of a story.

Now, should the government circumvent the Press? If I thought the government was more benevolent and truthful, then I would say maybe. But with all its flaws, the MSM still has a majority honest and principled journalists who do an excellent job, asking the tough questions. Now, if you are a friend of Bush, they might not be the questions you want to hear. Rather and co. lied, and they got what they deserved. Someone said "it's about time the media understood that just because they are journalists, doesn't mean they get a free pass".

What about Gannon then? He was a party-hack, and he got in the business of doing something that is NOT journalism, and pass it for journalism. The fact that some conservatives actually defend him makes me ask another question: What about ourselves? Aren't we obligated - when we claim to be distributing news - to give "no spin" news (and I don't mean the hyppocritical Bill O'Reilly kind)?

I don't know. I am better at talking face to face about these issues, so this probably seems disjointed. It is simply a display of my frustration with a debate that seems - on both sides - to be more motivated my politics and blood-craving, than it is with helping the media - MSM and Blog - refocus on tangible facts, and genuine search for truth.

Posted by: The Malau at February 27, 2005 7:09 AM | Permalink

One more thing:
Eason Jordan is entitled to his personal opinion (an opinion that is quite widely accepted outside of this country by the way). The beauty of America in my eyes, before I came here, was that people were truly entitled to their opinions, and the right of expressing them. Since 9/11, he is the second high-profile person to lose his job for daring to challenge the oh-so-infallible Bush administration's policies (Bill Mahr being the first). See, people refuse to understand that if they want their bigoted views to be aired and given room, they have to accept to listen to opposing viewpoints too.

And as for the MSM, people should campain to get CNN International on mass-cable, and NWI. They would have quite a different impression of the media.

Posted by: The Malau at February 27, 2005 7:16 AM | Permalink

, I don't want my information from Bush filtered through someone as obviously biased as you are.

then check out the white house web site for its press releases each day because that is the only way that you will get "unmediated" information about Bush.

What you will really be getting, of course, is not really information about Bush the President, but the Image of Bush the President that Bush wants you to see. The only thing "honest" about the information that you will be getting is that it is the officially approved "lie of the day."

The function of the press is not simply to parrot whatever people have to say, but to put pronouncements and events in their proper perspective. Even FauxNews and Jeff Gannon "spin" what came out of the White House by presenting it in its most favorable light -- often saying things that the White House would find it inappropriate to say in the process.

Like most wingers, your real problem isn't with the press, it is with the facts and the truth. In order to avoid those facts and truths, you do everything possible to "decertify" media that presents the facts in their proper perspective. Thus, for you the Killian memo story is not the one based on the facts (i.e. it was about a producer who was so eager for a scoop that she did not follow proper document authentication procedures), it was "proof" of the "liberal bias" of the entire "mainstream media."

Having now "proven" to yourself (regardless of the facts) that the mainstream media has a "liberal bias", you now feel free to ignore all of the other inconvenient facts presented by the MSM.

This is why every survey of voters showed that Bush supporters were overwhelmingly ignorant---even about the facts concerning the issues that were most important to them.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at February 27, 2005 8:28 AM | Permalink

Jay wrote:
"Your phrase public/advocacy journalism shows me you do have scant feeling for the thing you are either salvaging, or writing off or asking me to put out of its misery or.... I cannot relate to it, and frankly I have no idea what your question is about."

Forgive me. I've been catching up to speed by reading your 1999 book What are Journalists For? I absolutely agree that there are lessons to be learned from the exercises in public journalism, and I think they're important to use going forward. I'll have to follow up in a later post on Civilities.

But I wish that more people would do their homework here as well. There are people who believe that "the 'liberal' press is out to get conservatives" when, if they go back and read any book of media criticism from the last decade, they'll find that the samesuch "liberal press" was out to get Clinton to. Press criticism was not born on yesterday.

To cal-boy: Suppose that the White House Press Room were filled with people like "Jeff Gannon" and the rest of the clone drones. Would that serve democracy? And does it serve democracy when a handful of foils like "Jeff Gannon" are present in press conference to help distract from the critical questions? Was that helpful during the Clinton administration?

Posted by: Jon Garfunkl at February 27, 2005 9:42 AM | Permalink

Suppose that the White House Press Room were filled with people like "Jeff Gannon"

Then the room would be overwhelmed by the din of cell phones, ringing up said "reporters" for some "HOT MAN-TO-MAN ACTION" as the porno ads say.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 27, 2005 10:02 AM | Permalink

Brian: Your hostility is over-the-top and getting in the way of your ideas. You are so ready to unload on someone you aren't reading with a minimum of care. I didn't call you a Bush defender (check the tape.) I simply referred to Bush defenders and the explanations they tend to give. If you are one then consider yourself named. (I don't think of "Bush defender" as a nasty epithet, or dismissive. Do you?)

Second, I talked in this thread about the daily briefing, not the White House press conference. The briefing, Brian. The daily briefing (called the "gaggle" when the president is travelling) is normally conducted by the president's press secretary, and does not feature the president himself. It used to be Ari Fleischer's show, now it's McClellan's.

The briefing is much more of a work-a-day thing, less of public stage. It used to be a time when reporters could get some explanation and elaboration of the president's policies, reactions and ideas, and elicit the information they needed to do their stories. It used to be a forum where there was some ability to question the White House and hear how it reacts to contrary arguments and less convenient facts.

It was the one event where the White House knew it would face live questioning every day, no matter what. Now it's dead. If you don't see why that could be worrisome, then I feel sorry for you.

The "strike" I recommended (don't worry, it won't happen) would have zero effect on Bush, zero effect on his press policy. It would not change a thing, and I am sure the Bush team would have quite a chuckle about it. It would be a simply be a symbolic statement of how extreme things are. More for self-respect than anything else.

Finally, the press has done many things that have contributed to its current problems, including its problems with Bush and the Right wing and the great American public. In this post I am not concentrating on those things.

And yes, telling me nothing is different for the press under Bush is a lot of noise. Meaningless.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 27, 2005 10:34 AM | Permalink

Malau, my compliments for clearly summarizing issues in your recent comment, but what is said in your second comment jumps to the conclusion that Eason Jordan lost his job for daring to challenge the oh-so-infallible Bush administration's policies, and that Bill Maher did too. Consider that Jordan might have lost his job for stating an opinion that he knew had no basis in fact, or for being unwilling to argue his case. On the other hand, he might have lost his job for creating a news format that people didn't want to watch and because CNN's ratings had plummeted. (Many underlying flaws of CNN lie apart from its opinion.)

People are welcome to their own opinions, but if those opinions are unsound, the flaws should be pointed out and those holding such opinions should welcome the insight, grow, and move on. If they won't, they should expect reasonable people to turn away from them. Lots of reasonable people turn away from Bill Maher.

As far as your point about international perspectives, you are absolutely correct. That's why I lobbied for Canadian and Spanish stations on our cable and for Associated Press to carry editorials from international newspapers on their wire service. When AP did, no other newspaper but ours regularly ran them. AP should try again.

Posted by: sbw at February 27, 2005 10:38 AM | Permalink

If you have been reading What Are Journalists For? and from that reading learned to equate public journalism with advocacy journalism, then, Jon, I cannot help you. You're on your own with that curious misread. But try pages 195-96 and 200.

Posted by: Jay Rosenj at February 27, 2005 11:08 AM | Permalink

"And yes, telling me nothing is different for the press under Bush is a lot of noise. Meaningless."

I'll latch on to just this one comment from your long, disingenous reply because a lengthy rebuttal would clearly be a waste of my time. You whine fiercely that I mistate your point, then make up arguments and paste my name to them. Cut the bullshit. Where did I write, "Nothing is different"? Nowhere. But that doesn't stop you. (And yes, it was fun jumping up and down on my mislabelled reference to Bush 41's direct chats with the press--as if presidential press policy has no relation to the point. As if Bush 41's frequent press conferences--themselves a reaction to Reagan press policy--do not even fit in your story. Go ahead, make the claim, I think serious people will see that in doing so you'd rather throw a hissy fit than acknowledge context.)

Similarly, your simply asinine claim that your reference to "Bush defenders" earlier in this comment thread wasn't intended as a slam and a way to shove arguments aside without really considering them. Whom do you think you're kidding?

Here's a passage you might focus on, professor, before starting on any more pompous replies here:

"This is not to say that Bush's relationship with the press poses no new or interesting questions, but perspective is needed."

Where do you see "no difference under Bush"? Please point it out. It would be more impressive to see you actually reply to something I wrote rather than constructing a straw man and then tearing it to shreds.

Sorry, I'm not one of your worshipful students hoping you'll give me an A for the class, so whining about my "hostility" and then carrying on like an asshole in one long, self-serving reply isn't going to do it. By the way, you seem to do this with some frequency. I suggest you find a way to stop.

Posted by: Brian at February 27, 2005 11:11 AM | Permalink

"The WH briefing is dead because public interest in it is next to nil."

On what basis do you make that claim, Brian? You may well be right, but I'm curious as to how you came to such a conclusion. For I personally suspect the lack of interest may have to do with Bush himself rather than press conferences as a whole.

I'm old enough to remember JFK and his press conferences. They became world famous because he was witty, jovial and supremly capable of "thinking on his feet." He enjoyed talking to reporters and as he always produced copy they adored him. Looking back through the long lens of history it's possible to regard Kennedy's pres conferecne skill as a supreme form of defense. There are amillion questions weall would have asked him "had we'd known then what we do now" about his policies both foreign and domestic.

But the bottom line is (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) the JFK press conferences set the standard for all subsequent Presidential press conferences. Precious few of those that followed were able to come anywhere near shouting distance JFK's level of verbal polish. But an ability to "deal with the press" bcame something of a Beltway standard.

Bush, it would appear, has elected to destroy a game he has no interest in playing.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 27, 2005 12:28 PM | Permalink

Jay: Finally, the press has done many things that have contributed to its current problems, including its problems with Bush and the Right wing and the great American public. In this post I am not concentrating on those things.

For our edification, would you give us pointers to some links where, in the past, you have concentrated on those things? Sometimes we forget.

Posted by: sbw at February 27, 2005 12:48 PM | Permalink

David,

I am old enough to remember the JFK press briefings. Like you, I thought them able demonstrations of aplomb and openness while still massaging the message.

However, the press has since changed, not just the presidency. Strong advocacy, the injection of the reporter into the story, the Dan Rather handling of Nixon, each have become the part of the model now sought after by at least some in the WH briefing room.

If the current president is becoming politically innovative in his dealings with the press - then one can define the changes of the pressroom in that manner. I do not see, although it might be there, such a calculated approach to redefine the president's press relations. While I am sure there is calculation by the WH in regards to the press in the form of the WH press briefing, we may be ascribing too much of the change in the WH briefing room to the actions of the WH.

The relationships in the pressroom began to change as soon as the role of the reporter changed.

Posted by: John Lynch at February 27, 2005 1:15 PM | Permalink

jon- i have siad this many times- i want journalists to journal and if they cant do that without injecting their bias(from whatever side) then they should be removed to the editorial pages or start a talk radio show where the bias is out in the open. And youre right it doesnt serve democracy.
I guess I more amazed at the comical outrage on the Left concerning Jeff Gannon(pseudo journalist). Now juxtapose Jeff Gannon with Rather, Eason, Blair, Raines, and the thirty odd years of obvious dislike of conservatives by the MSM. I guess my point is that one Jeff Gannon, or two, or three doth not make a scandal. The scandal should be the lack of outrage by the Left over what the Right has had to endure from the MSM over the past decades.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 27, 2005 1:22 PM | Permalink

Rosen: Finally, the press has done many things that have contributed to its current problems, including its problems with Bush and the Right wing and the great American public. In this post I am not concentrating on those things.
Waters: For our edification, would you give us pointers to some links where, in the past, you have concentrated on those things? Sometimes we forget.

Here's a sampler of ten posts, sbw, each exploring different ways the press has contributed to its current problems:

What Time is it in Political Journalism?

Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending. The view from nowhere is being challenged.

Of Course Ted Koppel Was Making a Political Statement. So What?

Time for my political statement on Nightline's toll of the fallen last night.

Opinion Bad, Reporting Good and Nothing Else Do You Need to Know

How dumb should an ombudsman assume Americans to be? NPR's Jeffrey Dvorkin forces us to ask that. His answer: very dumb ndeed.

We Just Don't Think About It: The Strange Press Mind of Leonard Downie

Columnist Matthew Miller tried to ask Len Downie about the latent politics of news judgment. But the editor of the Washington Post won't go there: "We are not allowing ourselves to think politically."

Exit, Voice and Loyalty at the Los Angeles Times

Dean Baquet, number two at the LA Times, went to New Orleans and preached that old time religion: Don't kill the messenger. We're not here to be loved. We print the truth and some don't like it. But when 10,000 readers have quit in anger, that script needs work.

The View from Nowhere

Is ABC the most anti-war network? Ridiculous, says Peter Jennings. And it is... to him.

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow.

The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. The press has every reason to keep reporting aggressively on the investigation of Abu Ghraib. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?

Psst.... The Press is a Player

It is an open secret in political journalism that the press is a player. But by not developing that thought, journalists maintain the "view from nowhere." This helps explain some of the familiar rituals in campaign coverage.

Rather's Satisfaction: Mystifying Troubles at CBS

Dan Rather and CBS took the risky course, impunging the motives of critics, rather than a more confident and honorable one: Let's look at our sources and methods. What can explain such a blind reaction? Here is my attempt.

Stark Message for the Legacy Media

Journalists find before them, with 50 days left, a campaign overtaken by Vietnam, by character issues, attacks, and fights about the basic legitimacy of various actors-- including the press itself, including Dan Rather. It's been a dark week. And the big arrow is pointing backwards.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 27, 2005 3:40 PM | Permalink

To the Right Honourable Jay- being a newcomer I thank you for the previous posts- they were extremely helpful in putting some things in perspective.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 27, 2005 5:50 PM | Permalink

I'd like to note that the mainstream press have been thoroughly complicit in the subversion of the institution, and that l'affaire Guckert offers budding and lay journalists an unparalleled opportunity to get in the game. BTC News, for instance, are dead set on gaining at least a part-time White House correspondent by the end of the year now that we know how easy it is.

The institutional press still do and always will have have financial and physical resources that are not available to bloggers, but more and more the failures of the press arise less from blown investigative opportunities—Guckert being one—than from blown analysis and failures to follow up on worthwhile stories that see the light of day once and then vanish. Those are areas in which bloggers can and have excelled. And I'm beginning to think that among the solutions to the dereliction of the press, and the consequent ease with which the White House has castrated them, is responsible mob blogging.

At the moment the press react with a sort of visceral horror at the sight of bloggers descending upon a story en masse, as if the pressroom were being invaded by waves of giant cockroaches. At some point, though, if bloggers and non-institutional journalists continue to dog the news and to expand their beats, the press will realize that they're losing column inches and dollars to the interlopers.

When the fact that anyone can pick up a phone and call a government or corporate office and start asking questions genuinely takes hold among consumers and critics of the press, and when the lay press begin to pose a genuine, measurable economic and professional threat to the institutional version as a result, the latter will at long last be facing that "Come to Jesus" moment when it's necessary to either stand up or give up.

For the first time in years I have a sense of optimism regarding the fate of the institutional press.

If you live in the D.C. area, have a sceptical nature and a leftist bias, a valid driver's license and no wants or warrants and you're not a hooker, drop me a note: You could be the BTC Newsie in the White House.

Posted by: weldon berger at February 27, 2005 6:47 PM | Permalink

Jay, I just saw your response to my comment over at BOP news. My sophisticated plan for getting into the White House involves having someone who lives in D.C. wander over to the media affairs office and say, "Hi, I work for BTC News. We're just like Talon News except we don't do dictation, we have no hookers, and some of our contributors write under their real names. Can I please have a press pass?"

It's off to a slow start and the plan is a bit more complicated than that—only a bit, though; I'll email you about the other parts—but the effort is less than a week old and I'm confident we'll succeed eventually.

Cheers,

Weldon

Posted by: weldon berger at February 27, 2005 7:12 PM | Permalink

Thanks, Weldon. Here is a long, serious article that many of you who are skeptical of the press will like: The Media and Medievalism, by Robert D. Kaplan

Exposure is the particular terrain of the investigative journalist. It is the investigative journalist who has inherited the mantle of the old left, whatever the ideological proclivities of individual practitioners of the trade. The investigative journalist is never interested in the 90 per cent of activities that are going right, nor especially in the 10 per cent that are going wrong, but only in the 1 per cent that are morally reprehensible. Because he always seems to define even the most heroic institutions by their worst iniquities, his target is authority itself. Disclaimers notwithstanding, he is the soul of the left incarnate.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 27, 2005 8:43 PM | Permalink

Thanks for the Kaplan link, Jay. Your money quote from the piece is dead on with respect to my sensibilities. I'd argue that the percentages are shifting ...

Regarding the Neuman piece in the LA Times: It seems more than a bit disingenuous to me. Aside from Sarah Nover, of whom I hadn't heard before, there really aren't any parallels to Guckert there. Sarah McClendon and even Lester Kinsolving are in different ballparks, and including that Fitzwater quote equating Helen Thomas and Dan Rather with Guckert, absent some alternative perspective, is malpractice.

Posted by: weldon berger at February 27, 2005 9:05 PM | Permalink

I will try to find the will to go on, if indeed I still exist outside the realm of your acknowledgement. I'll miss your point-trashing discursions.

JFK is an excellent example. A president who took the art of using style points to manipulate the press to a whole new level. Kennedy loved to talk to the press the way a con artist loves to talk to his marks.

Why do I say the public has little interest in the briefings? Just a gut feeling based on the fact that the only information that comes out of them consists of prepared announcements that could just as easily be posted on the White House site in the manner of a corporate press release--and this was true before Bush became president. When a president (or, in the case of Kerry, a candidate) wants to avoid unpleasant questions, he either gives his press secretary zero wiggle room to deviate from the prepared text or he doesn't bother with the briefing at all (or makes a "no questions asked" statement). What is the point? Just look at one subject, Social Security reform. How much useful information and fodder for debate came out of briefing exchanges vs. weblogs and, belatedly, print and television discussion?

In short, had Kerry won last November I don't think briefings or press conferences would have changed one bit (judging by his performance on the trail).

Posted by: Brian at February 27, 2005 10:36 PM | Permalink

Jay: "That was when I first became aware that the Bush Administration was putting an end to business-as-usual between the executive and the press."

Jay: "The press was tameable, sure. It could be managed, and manipulated. ... Realism alone called for a certain wary respect."

What if realism no longer calls for being wary of the press? And if not wary of it, why respect it?

In fact, isn't the "Bush Thesis" a reality-based political approach to a press afflicted by self-inflicted mortal wounds to its credibility?

I'd be tempted to tip my hat to the political realism and acumen of the Bush administration if this was, as you say, a "political innovation".

But it's not. And treating your critics who point that out as "noise" is at a minimum disengenous and probably missing the signal in that noise.

Yes, compare Teddy Roosevelt and Taft. Compare Kennedy and Nixon. Compare Clinton and W. But also compare the press corps of their day.

There is an assumption here that Guckert is more than what came before him. Guckert is not a "political innovation" and neither are VNR's or Whitehouse PR funds.

Also, Jay, "Second, I talked in this thread about the daily briefing, not the White House press conference." Actually, you talk about both. Specifically, you "like Brian Montopoli's description of what 'Jeff Gannon' did with his moment in the national spotlight ...."

Was Montopoli confused? Given the low standards at CJR lately, I would not be surprised. Were you?

Absolutely, let's treat the Presidential press conference different than the "gaggle". But then, Jay, treat them differently or explain how they are interchangeable in the "Bush Thesis".

Please do explain how you can distinguish Guckert as a pawn of this "Bush Thesis" and not another "fringe" pseudo-journalist with a day pass. Or a blantantly biased Pundit with a "hard pass".

And in blog-centric cheerleading:

Therefore, in the next war, while the media provide the global cosmopolitan perspective, the troops themselves may well provide the American one. The fact is that most grunts can’t stand to be portrayed as victims. The quietly mounting trend of American soldiers and Marines writing about their experiences and posting them on weblogs rather than having their experiences interpreted by transnational journalists is proof enough. *

and

Dan Froomkin: Having waited a long time for the press corps to overtly revolt against this vile tradition [anonymous sources], allow me to suggest another possibilty: What if White House reporters just started anonymously outing the anonymous briefers to bloggers? Just an idea. *

Posted by: Sisyphus at February 27, 2005 11:31 PM | Permalink

To the Right Honourable Weldon Berger and Right Honourable Jay Rosen:
Why does a journalism degree somehow confer upon someone this aura of 'pure objectivity'?
Granted, Helen Thomas has far better English skills than Jeff Gannon, but is she any less biased than Jeff Gannon or has she some higher ability to hide or fend off such bias in her writing or question-asking at a Presidential briefing? Or Rather?
I am so weary of this aristocratic thinking that journalists are the troubadors of virtue of todays world simply by taking writing classes at a university.
Am I more of an arbiter of world history and world affairs by virtue of my history degree at Cal?
Really, I dont understand-and I am trying believe me- this higher status that is accorded to people with journalism degrees. As if they have some sort of special and spiritual ability to distance themselves from the age old disability of bias and hypocrisy that afflicts us all.
To the point, I think a person of Jeff Gannon's stature and outing as a pseudo journalist demonstrates to us the REAL pseudo journalism-in political coverage- and bias behind the MSM today. The conservatives are tired of one-sided coverage and are fighting against it and you have the MSM not wanting anything but one-sided coverage so they are going to fight and out any Jeff Gannon's in the media world.
I just watched 'Mr. Smith goes to Washington' again so I apologize for my idealism.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 28, 2005 1:00 AM | Permalink

Good questions, Sisyphus.

First, the context for briefing vs. press conference was my claim that the briefing was "killed." That came in the comments. So I said that I meant in that comment the briefing and not the Presidential press conference, which is a different ritual.

That's dead too, but not in the same way, or for the same reasons, or with the same effects. It's been dying for a lot longer. I didn't say it had been killed.

Gannon's question to Bush came in a press conference with Bush, not a briefing with McClellan.

The briefing was killed not by Gannon (although he is one part), but through the intensification of practices (not answering or explaining) that have always been there.

I think the Bush press policy is an act of political realism and does testify to the acumen of the administration. I think they should take credit for it, and their supporters should give them credit. Historians will.

The innovation is simply in the coherence and totality of the overall approach, not "things that have never been done before." It has theory. (No fourth estate, no check and balance.) It has practice (don't answer their questions, it just encourages them). It has leaders (Bush, Cheney, Card, Ashcroft, Limbaugh, Hewett.) It has followers, chumps (HHS hiring Karen Ryan, Education Department buying Armstrong Williams). It has culture. It has politics. It has rhythm. It's the easiest radio ever made.

De-certify, de-legitimate the traditional press. Do you say it's not happening, Tim? What a lot of people are saying to me is: Jay, don't you see they deserved it?

Denying and destroying the legitmacy of a social institution is a series of acts over a period of time undertaken by many people who understand the overall task. There are all kinds of ways that the target may "deserve it."

I think the press has made many serious mistakes and participated in many evasions of responsibility that have led to this point. It has deflected too much when it should have been reflecting on what was said. It has failed to change when it should have.

The Bush realism was in realizing the press was too weak to resist the move to de-certify it.

When we look at the history of the White House Press over a longer arc, the picture I see is this: (In was going to add this to my post, but it was too long already.) Teddy Roosevelt invited the press into the White House officially in 1902. He reserved a room for it as the West Wing was renovated. Congress didn't know it, but the upper hand they had ended then.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to have modern political (photogenic) charisma, and modern press relations really begin with him-- trial balloons, for example, and the practice of testing reaction by talking a little about something. The president's ability to dominate the political scene by dominating the news really began with him, too, even though there were precedents for all this. (McKinley, especially.)

When the correspondents were invited into the White House, and to some degree into T.R.'s confidence, that began an era that changed the institution of the Presidency, and the balance of powers between Congress and the Executive, well before television and its powers of personalization came along to seal the deal.

But nothing lasts forever and the great era of having a press inside the White House to question the President--and be spun, and toss softballs--may be over. I feel certain that the Bush people want it to be over. Still, 1902 to 2002 is a pretty good run.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 28, 2005 1:19 AM | Permalink

Here's where I think your thesis goes awry, Jay.

You say post press. But it's not post press. Bush, and not just Bush but other politicians are - and have been - catching on, is post American Mainstream Media Party press. It is post New Muckrakers press. Post Watergate press and post 60 Minutes press.

It is post "falling circulation" press. It is post credible press. It is post trust press [note that the more partisan/less "professional" European press is more trusted by Europeans].

But it is not post press. You used different descriptors, which I found telling: traditional press, political press and Washington press. But those descriptors have no expiration date. They have no place on a timeline.

It's like telling me that the Bush administration is post New Deal politics and is trying to de-certify New Dealers as illegitimate as a political movement.

How dare they!?!

Posted by: Sisyphus at February 28, 2005 1:48 AM | Permalink

cal-boy, I have no idea whether Helen Thomas even went to college, let alone whether or not she has a journalism degree. Lots of journalists don't, and about the first thing any new j-school grad hears when she hits the newsroom is, "Forget everything you learned in j-school."

I do know that Thomas has 60 years of news experience and has covered nine presidents as a White House correspondent, along with covering the Justice Department, the FBI and other agencies. Any comparison between her and Guckert falls miles short of even being a joke. It isn't the degree; it's the doing.

And it isn't a matter of writing skills either. Some great reporters are crappy writers, which is why Loki made copy editors. It isn't even a matter of advocacy; Guckert isn't a journalist simply because he didn't commit any journalism.

I can't speak for Jay, but I think it's safe to say he isn't exactly enamored of the performance of the institutional press in recent decades. Neither am I. And it has absolutely nothing to do with who has a journalism degree and who doesn't.

Posted by: weldon berger at February 28, 2005 2:14 AM | Permalink

Jay: The innovation is simply in the coherence and totality of the overall approach, not "things that have never been done before."

It seems to work for Bush. Although, I have this nagging feeling that the Democrats and media have helped make it seem more innovative, more coherent, and more successful than it may actually be.

Posted by: Sisyphus at February 28, 2005 2:15 AM | Permalink

This is a much clearer articulation of what I've been thinking for a while.

What would you do about it, if you ran a daily? Do any of them get it? Some of the reporters obviously do, but do the editors? Will they ever get it, or are we going to have to start from scratch on the liberal blogs?

From a crassly commercial standpoint: if right-wing viwers and readers are completely, unalterably convinced that any network left of Fox and any newspaper or wire service is "irrelevant"....shouldn't right-wing viewers and readers start becoming a lot less relevant to the press? Liberals bitch a lot about the press too, but if you listen closely we're making a lot of the same complaints as the Columbia Journalism Review. We'd be pretty easy to please, comparatively. Yeah, there's issues of access, but no one's getting real access in any case. You'd be better off reading the Australian, Israeli and Canadian newspapers than listening to a white house briefing. So can we please have ONE major daily or TV netowrk that's not intimidated out of real reporting by charges of left-wing bias?

Or are liberal bloggers--who are such natural allies of the press--going to have to start over from scratch?

Posted by: Katherine at February 28, 2005 2:16 AM | Permalink

I am sorry to come back to this, but once again, people need to take a chill pill! Some people in the threads are talking about the MSM as if it was the Nazis, who have submitted the right-wingers to continuous and excruciating torture! Take a look around, people. Perspective is the key. Have you been to Zimbabwe, or Congo, or Burma, or North Korea lately? I mean talk about a biased press!!

I am not suggesting that this MSM vs. Blogs vs. "peoples' feelings being hurt by some journalist's expression of their opinion" debate is not legitimate, because it is. Some elements of the MSM have discredited themselves. And as a foreigner, the MSM (like the bloggers) should make more efforts at presenting facts and balanced views, especially on things as important as the war. Where I sometimes disagree, is in what direction the bias goes. I mean sometimes I feel that the Liberals in the media have always been under fire, but that is another discussion.

What I want to argue here, is that if our main interest and purpose is the truth, then it seems to me that we need a combination of the network MSM (with its qualities and resources, as well as its flaws), and responsible citizenship. See the problem, in my opinion, is that people have grown to be so apathetic in this country, and so "I don't give a damn", that they failed to fulfill their responsibility as citizens to keep themselves appraised of the state of the nation (and the World).

What has happened with some bloggers (because many are just as crooked-party-hacks as Begala or O'reilly) is that they have taken on that job of following up on the stories, and pointing out when there was a discrepancy in the facts. It is, in my opinion, that symbiosis between institutional press and responsible citizenry that is going to serve the truth better. We need BOTH!!!

You think Bill Moyers has a dishonest agenda? Well go do your job as a citizen, and prove it if you can, be my guest (I will help!). You think - like I do - that the "King of no-spin" Bill O'Reilly and FOX NEWS are the biggest spinners on the planet, call it out!! Blog it out!!! It is our job as citizens to hold our leaders (the media being the 4th estate, I call them leaders) accountable, YES! But using ponctual cases to destroy decades old institutions simply because they disagree with our views just seems counter-productive and irresponsible. And it seems like many of my fellow bloggers are just out to do exactly that, and it's sad! I mean I can't stand FOX NEWS because it seems to me like they are lying constantly, that doesn't mean I will go try and to ruin them; I'll change the channel, or turn off the TV, and I will proceed to do my own research on the subject they talked about. See the problem is not the MSM per-se. The problem is excessive and lazy reliance on them by the people.

You know what? some of the people in the debate really live up to the stereotypes that we have about the US: BLOWING EVERYTHING OUT OF PROPRTIONS. People were laughing back home with the Monica Gate, because they were watching the leading country in privacy rights, breaching its own leader's privacy for political and info-tainment gain! As I said earlier, people need to take a chill pill. Things aren't as bad. All this is an artificial partisan mess (in my opinion) that could have been avoided if we had all heded Rousseau's warning:

The better the state isconstituted, the more does public business take precedence over private in the minds ofthe citizens. (...)In a well-regulated nation, every person hastens to the assemblies; under a bad government, no one wants to take a step to go to them, because no one feels the least interest in what is done there. As soon as someone says of the business of the state---‘What does it matter to me?’---then the state must be reckoned lost."

Posted by: The Malau at February 28, 2005 5:54 AM | Permalink

As the Blogger of the Year you might shout a few beer around ;-) Congratulations!!!

By the way, cold hearted Ann Coulter hot off the press - Liberals focusing on Gannon in frothing-at-the-mouth retaliation

Strangest comparison of all: by By Ken Hughes - Is Jeff Gannon, The New Matt Drudge

Posted by: Jozef Imrich at February 28, 2005 7:13 AM | Permalink

cal boy: "Why does a journalism degree somehow confer upon someone this aura of 'pure objectivity?'"

Who said anything about needing a journalism degree? Who mentioned "pure objectivity?" I didn't, and I wouldn't. You imported those notions.

Between 40 and 60 percent of those working as jouralists never went to jounalism school, and the higher you go in news organizations, the higher the percentage. Not only do you not need a journalism degree to be a professional journalist, but to require such would almost certainly be unconstitutional.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 28, 2005 9:01 AM | Permalink

I re-read the links Jay provided and wrote: Removing the 'Post' from Post-Press. Excerpt:

I'm sure that Jay and I agree that journal is a necessary lynch pin of civilization. Jay seems to respect journalism so much that he seems to report on journalism more as he wishes it to be -- without the tough love of hard, constructive criticism.

A sturdy scrutiny of the administration press corps is in order. "PressThink" is absolutely the right place to consider how to encourage excellence in their journalism that will make "Stiff-ya" not only unnecessary, but show it to be the bad form we all know it to be.

Posted by: sbw at February 28, 2005 10:10 AM | Permalink

sbw: "I'm sure that Jay and I agree that journal ..."

should be:

"I'm sure that Jay and I agree that journalism ..."

And I reread it before sending it, too. Sorry.

Posted by: sbw at February 28, 2005 10:19 AM | Permalink

"Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago," says Little Annie Tranny.

It was fully operational when discovered with a few stroke of the keypad, dear.

"Is Jeff gannon the new Matt Drudge"

Seeing as they're both self-loathing closet queens he's a lot like the old Matt Drudge -- except for the fact that Drudge never put his bod on the market.

Posted by: David Ehrenstein at February 28, 2005 10:41 AM | Permalink

Of course Sisyphus you HAVE no bias. Yet why do I hear the same ant-leftist pro-republican thesis from you over and over. If it quacks I don't need to see the walk.

Posted by: marky48 at February 28, 2005 12:32 PM | Permalink

Katherine,

That's a great comment, but your frustration is decades late.

Liberals are beginning to feel the exclusion and detachment from the media that conservatives have long complained about. And when they did complain in earlier years, they were called a "miserable, carping retromingent vigilante."

And what were their complaints?

Their complaints were similar to yours. That's where the Left gets it wrong. Where they misunderstand the history of the public walking away from the "traditional press". Conservatives and Liberals want more of their stories covered and less of the other's.

And what did Conservative ask for decades ago? They asked for an Ombudsman at CBS. They asked for an in-house panel responsive to the public to investigate the validity of their complaints.

What they got was derision, condescension and name-calling.

You're correct, I believe, that some on the Right have decided that discourse is a waste of time with an institutional press so secure in their infallibility that their critics can be dismissed with prejudice. They decided instead to fight fire with fire. To build their own media that speak to the tens of millions of Americans that do not subscribe to the values in global cosmopolitan, transnational PressThink. Americans that are not immersed in social responsibility morality.

The Left, in the years that conservatism has been ascendant, is feeling what conservatives felt in the 60s and 70s of ascendant Liberalism.

Do you doubt it? Do you not see the search for the Left's Rush Limbaugh? Do you not see the organization of AIM and MRC on the Left in FAIR and others since the 80s?

You write about press failures concerning WMD in Iraq, ties to al-Qaeda and the public misperceptions still held on many accounts. But why just these failures when there are so many? And why see this as anything other than normal human tendency that afflicts Liberals, Conservatives and Journalists alike?

You wrote: "Whereas I just want you to report on the stories you consider most important, and not whatever everyone else is talking about that week." [emphasis added]

But you really want the press to cover the stories that the Daily Howler considers most important and in the way you want. The way Bill Moyers, a political pundit, has for decades. You subscribe to the meme that Conservative criticism wants to squelch only unfavorable, but meritable, stories without any stories of merit of their own they want covered. Yet the evidence is contrary. You believe that Liberals have only the press' best interests at heart while forwarding your own worldview.

So how does the press react today to the Left's versions of AIM, MRC and Rush Limbaugh - budding today in response to the rise of conservative "news"? Today, the press is not so self-assured. Not so confident in their infallibility and the wrongness of their critics. Perhaps, even chastened by the fall of Rather and Jordan who spoke within their "truth frames" based on either a lack of truth or outright fakes/forgeries.

I certainly understand the Left wanting a press with the backbone to bring down Bush. I'm sure they wish for such a Democratic Party. But your assumption that the truth resides on the Left is bound to be wrong at times.

Posted by: Sisyphus at February 28, 2005 4:52 PM | Permalink

-To the RH weldon-thanks for the feedback!
-To the RH Malua...I just like your writing...
-To the RH Jay Rosen of whom we are all thankful for: There are many aspects of the journalistic world of which I am wholly ignorant of, and therefore my questions are sophmoric at times, but it really stems from wanting to know certain things about the media like, for example, when did journalism actually become a degree program at universities in the United States?
It seems that what we are witnessing is a strange power struggle of different mediums and sometimes I dont know from what angle to approach things from-such is the emotional weirdness of living and being in the History of the event and the Moment itself while it is all being played out in front of us.

Posted by: cal-boy at February 28, 2005 10:45 PM | Permalink

Jay: "Thank you, Katherine. That says it pretty well."

It does? Really? Which part?

I especially appreciated this part:

I want them to cover the Maher Arar case and extraordinary rendition; they want them not to run a picture where one member of the audience might not be showing Bush proper homage, or to write stories about people who don't have health care because that's socialist. But there [sic] complaints are "because they feel excluded" and mine are "mau-mauing". It's infuriating.

I wonder, what does Katherine think of p.lukasiak comments here? Katherine?

How about the posts that you delete, Jay? From the Right or Left? Both?

Should we imagine the readers' letters from the Left and compare apples? Do we need to?

When a reporter receives an e-mail message that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit has been passed.

Can we discuss how that was handled today and compare it to how it might have been handled in the past and in the future?

Yes, please Jay, which part?

Posted by: Sisyphus at March 1, 2005 5:08 PM | Permalink