Ahhh the good ol days when you guys had something, anything to be proud of.

Posted by: plane at September 16, 2005 1:58 PM | Permalink

You can believe CBS screwed up in some journalistic manner, getting the facts wrong and being too arrogant to admit it, even to themselves.
Or you can believe that CBS deliberately lied in order to throw a presidential election.

Which is true? "We did it because we're dumb." is probably better than "We did it because we're crooked."
But it will not reassure readers. Should it? CBS seems to think that having reassured us they aren't crooks is all that's necessary.

When it comes to choosing between the two, we may add two other pre-election happenings. One is the untended ammo dump story, al Kaka. We discover that CBS and the NYT had connived at holding the story--apparently no competitive pressure with this one--for a week in order to be too close to the election for a rebuttal to gain traction.
Shortly after the election, about fourteen seconds, this momentous lapse in US planning for Iraq became a non-story and has not been heard from since.

Ditto the flu vaccine shortage. By spring, the docs couldn't give the stuff away. But, since there had been word zero since the election, hardly anybody noticed.

Looking at the TANG story in the light of these two, among others, makes be doubt the "we're dumb" excuse.

Not that they aren't dumb. If Dan Rather had kept that old Selectric, Kerry might be president today.

So they're both dumb and crooked.

I don't see how they will ever change their reputation.
It is beyond the bounds of possibility that they will come all over honest all of a sudden. But that's the only thing that will do it, and only if they maintain it for years and years. Which they won't do in this universe.

They're screwed and they deserve it, having earned it fair and square.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 16, 2005 1:58 PM | Permalink

I noticed that the first comment pointed out a slight factual error in your piece. The comment has disappeared, and the error has been corrected. This may seem like a small point, but wouldn't it have been more transparent to respond to the first comment with another thanking the commenter for pointing out the inaccuracy and indicating that the error had been corrected?

Posted by: Not One Jot at September 16, 2005 2:02 PM | Permalink

The biggest word missing from this essay is "humility". It's not enough to say that others know more than mainstream journalists - at some level they realize that. What mainstream journalists have to achieve in their own minds is the humility to actually listen to others who know more when those journalists don't like what they are hearing.

In the computer industry there is a type of technical trainer who believes he or she can teach absolutely anything. Just give them a day or two to prepare, and they're go right out there and do the training class, even if they have zero experience in the subject matter.

I've seen these folks crash and burn in front of knowledgeable audiences. It doesn't seem to affect them. They're right back the next time, slinging the bull whenever they get in trouble with the material.

Fortunately, such trainers are a small percentage. Journalists, though, seem to be overwhelmingly afflicted with the same problem. They'll write about anything, whether they understand it or not, and have the arrogance to expect that others will just accept it. After all, they're journalists! They went to journalism school and everything!

A little bit of humility goes a long, long way. Actually listening to opposing facts, opinions, and sentiments could make journalists far more effective, and dramatically less error prone on the really big errors. It's easy to make little errors, and everyone understands that. But the big errors are the ones that count, and the only way to avoid them is to listen to the people that know enough to spot the errors. And I mean listening humbly, with an open mind, instead of defensively, as the canonical example of CBS News was done.

Posted by: Billy Hollis at September 16, 2005 2:02 PM | Permalink

Brings to mind these letters regarding the "real story" missed by CJR in Corey Pein's article attacking bloggers for uncovering CBS's failings.

Posted by: ss at September 16, 2005 2:54 PM | Permalink

I've asked this of news professionals many times, and have never gotten an answer.

Why has CBS not retracted the story? Everyone now knows it wasn't true. Why haven't they taken the formal, largely symbolic step of actually retracting? Even today, they only say they cannot verify that the documents are authentic, but they stand by the story anyway

Posted by: RRiley at September 16, 2005 3:09 PM | Permalink

Richard, i think you have a point, but there is a third option that CBS would be least likely to cop to of all. Supreme hubris. Yes, I think Rather and his minions were out to 'get' Bush, but that they utterly believed the story was there to be 'got'. Believing themselves beyond error, and also believing in this golden throne of the 4th estate they have concvinced themselves they sit upon, CBS decided to press the story out before the election 'for the good of the nation'. Needless to say whether a 40 year old story about the ins and outs of a few NG weekends really said anything about a sitting president is dubious at best. But thats what they had and thats what they ran with. In short, I dont think there was 'intent' here by CBS to run a false story and bring down a president. It was ungodly arrogance built upon disdain for the judgement of the American people, and above all the total abandonment of the journalistic principals they claimed to enshrine. The smug bastards played fast and loose with their trust and got smacked down for it.

Posted by: Mark Buehner at September 16, 2005 3:10 PM | Permalink

From http://underthenews.blogspot.com ...

I've been a newspaperman since I co-founded my junior high paper at the tender age of 12, about 36 years ago. My final decision to become an ink-stained wretch was made in the heady post-Watergate days, the apex of journalism's nobility and the calm before the anti-"Media" storm. Back then, it was still possible for a young reporter to think of himself as a kind of knight who could change the world with his typewriter.

Clearly, things have changed. The idealism of young journalists has lost its edge, the world doesn't care too much what we say anymore, and the typewriter is a dusty decoration on my credenza.

And now I -- and many like me -- have been demoted from "knight" to "MSM." This blogging acronym for "mainstream media" oozes a certain flippant disrespect, as if a life in journalism is not merely the least qualification for a blogger, but might even connote to Blogospherians an intolerable cowardice, arrogance or treachery. Many -- maybe most -- bloggers might just as well hang out a sign: "We don't want your kind 'round here."

I'm too new at blogging to understand the nuances. The blogosphere is certainly not a utopian society, free of prejudice, deception, crime, or other sins. It's merely an extension of the old-model society, like a neighborhood on the other side of the Monorail tracks. So I'm not particularly surprised that the "Old Guard" of the Information Age (the so-called MSMers) are held suspect by the New Guard (bloggers.)

But I'm curious about why. I hear regularly how the MSM lacks fairness (OK, and balance) but increasingly I believe that aggressive news-consumers aren't truly seeking reporting without bias ... they want reporting that reflects their own bias. "Fair" is a report that generally supports the reader/viewer's established opinions ... "unfair" is a report that allows for divergent viewpoints. Thus, the mainstream media, in striving to allow for differing views, cannot avoid being labeled as "unfair" ... and thus is demonized in the blogosphere (and apparently everywhere else that a person would be jealous of his opinions.) And in the Blogosphere, we are allowed to seek out the "fairest" opinions/reporting, i.e., the ones that fit our biases.

In my short blogging experience, I have sensed not just disdain for each other by both bloggers and MSMers, but a mutual paranoia that either might be the death of honest, accurate, important, genuine and noble information exchange. Personally, I believe more information is better than less, so I am not threatened by the Blogosphere, and I see its value in transmitting information that transcends the basic restrictions of mainstream media, namely space, time and mass audience.

I worry a little about the blogosphere's "Tower of Babel" and information-anxiety, but they don't keep me awake at night. Will the whole world soon turn to bloggers (and away from MSM) for information? It's doubtful. But to supplement their minimum daily requirement of knowledge and entertainment? Absolutely.

I really want to know, from non-MSM bloggers and MSMers alike, is the blogosphere a community that is made better or worse by your co-existence? Why should one side be viewed more or less skeptically than the other? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses in this diverse community, vis a vis MSM?

Talk to me, bloggers.

Posted by: Ron Franscell at September 16, 2005 3:11 PM | Permalink

This article is entirely irrelevant - the "why" is of no consequence until the real crime is admitted. CBS tried to influence the election by publishing stuff they knew was likely false for maximum negative impact on one candidate, and ignored contentious stories about the other. A simple comparison of the skepticism level on the Guard memos and on the Swift Vets tells you all you need to know. CBS and most of the rest of the media are so full of liars that I personally do not care what their motivations are - and they are not only liars, but even worse they are sanctimonious hypocrites who pretend to be performing a public service while they lie. The author of this piece might as well wring his hands over the motivations of Yasser Arafat, who at least finally had the good taste to drop dead.

Posted by: Daver at September 16, 2005 3:21 PM | Permalink

CBS was too busy ignoring and then denigrating the swift boats to come clean on Rathergate.

Posted by: EDPOIN at September 16, 2005 3:22 PM | Permalink

Jay, did you notice that Public Eye closes its comments 24 hours after the post appears. You might want to give them a heads up about why that is not the smartest move.

I think your post there is great.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 3:24 PM | Permalink

No Ron, the MSM really IS biased. They do it by filtering more so than one-sided reporting. I didn't realize how bad it was until after 9/11. Up til then I'd be resisting getting a computer in the house. I sit in front of one all day and I didn't was a "busman's holiday" type of environment at home. But with the news after 9/11 becoming somewhat repetitious and other people at work who DID have a computer at home having more insight than I did, even though I read several newspapers, I got curious and did some surfing over lunch. Within a week after 9/11 I had a computer at home and was finding out how much I'd been lied to over the years. Lies of omission. Often events were happening that just didn't show up on the MSM radar or other time when what DID show up was clearly one sided. Sorry, but reporters are not tasked to change the world, just report on it. Stop glorifying yourselves.

Posted by: rabidfox at September 16, 2005 3:33 PM | Permalink

Another good piece, Jay.
I echo what Jenny D says.. again. (We keep agreeing on things!)

I hope CBS takes your comments to heart.
Have you got reaction from it yet from CBS people?

Meanwhile I got fed up with an unrelated but annoying news meme - the one about Garrison Keillor - and will try to correct bad info with good info.

Posted by: Scott Butki at September 16, 2005 3:34 PM | Permalink

Jay, great letter. Hope you make a positive contribution.

Bloggers make way more errors than MSM -- but almost always correct them, when there are links to source documents.

MSM provides a huge amount of those source links, those interviews, those quotes about what the "facts" are. But Bloggers are fully able to do the analysis of what the facts mean.

Prior PressThink articles on the debate.
Should the MSM reporters merely provide the "facts", and NOT be part of the story?
OR -- should the reporters want to "make a difference", perhaps make the world a better place?

Most reporters want both -- but can't do both. Making a difference means supporting a policy. Policy support colors all the "facts" that are presented, and especially the ones NOT presented.

Also, facts are not value judgments.

Ron, your anti-Nixon Watergate knights were successful in getting him to resign; they were also successful in their other policy, getting the US to leave Vietnam. The fact is, after the US left, there was genocide. MSM knights changing the world -- supporting a policy of allowing genocide.

How many would have to die before the MSM, like Chronkite (most trusted man in America), would say leaving Vietnam is a bad policy?

Posted by: TomGrey at September 16, 2005 3:39 PM | Permalink

Ron Franscell: You really, really don't get it, do you? It's a little sad to see so many MSM-ers genuinely at a loss.

First of all, no one asked you to become a "knight" and to change the world. Doing so necessarily imposes your worldview on the rest of us and pardon us if we don't bow to your wisdom.

Your characterization of "fair" and "unfair" is completely ridiculous. If the MSM had made the slightest attempt over the past 30 years to check the leftward drift of their "hard news", we wouldn't even need an alternative media.

The fact is that the alternative media developed in response to your one-sided, condescending preening (not you, personally, that is).

Your comment about the mainstream media "striving to allow for differing views" is laughable. If you really believe that, you are much too gullible to be a reporter. If you are simply being disingenuous, then you are insulting our intelligence.

You're worried about the information "Tower of Babel" are you? And this is why -- all together now -- because the general population is too stupid to sort through the conflicting bullcrap and draw its own conclusions. We need of the help of the superior intellects of the journalism school graduates (a great number of whom, it has been noted, go into journalism in college because it doesn't require any math).

The blogosphere is the media of choice of most intelligent people of my generation because of the sheer volume of voices. We know the truth is in there somewhere. The MSM had credibility at one time, but aside from the aging-hippie lefties and their less intelligent progeny, I don't know anyone who believes them anymore.

And the very sad part is that you have only yourselves to blame.

Posted by: martak at September 16, 2005 3:46 PM | Permalink

Well. Ron. As neither let me tell you what I'm interested in seeing. Since neither of you do not exist except to inform the public. I find that most MSM and bloggers are self serving. However. There's always a however isn't there? The MSM has a greater histiory of bending the facts to serve your own purposes. I give you David Brinkleys coverage of the TET offensive as an example. Things seem to have gone down hill from there. Consider this, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has a better reputation for accuracy than the New York Times.
While it is true that many bloggers are just as self serving many of them make no claim to being objective so that the reader is under no impression they're being propagandized. The otheres are only interested in giving out the facts as they see them.Few, and in my opinion the best, are interested in making public the evidence that the rest of us can draw our own conclusions from They are, in short, a watchdog not only on your MSM but on each other as well.
There is no attempt on bloggers to talk down to their readers. The main reason I personally no longer watch most network news.
All any thinking person wants from the news is the facts without the interminable moralizing.Bloggers give that to their readers. MSM does not.
Information is the the single most valuable commodity in the new millenia. And the wonderful thing about the internet is that, that commodity is no longer under your control.
The choice of news has become even wider and varied, and having a choice is a good thing.

Rusty, out.

Posted by: Rusty at September 16, 2005 3:51 PM | Permalink

Many bloggers are just partisan ranters, but those people have little readership or influence outside their narrow spheres of sympathizers. Many of the comments made by Old Media folks about bloggers try to reduce the entire blogosphere to just these ranters. That is not accurate, and to the extent Old Media ignores that fact, it will remain clueless as to the nature and influence the more influential bloggers have.

Bloggers like Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnson, the folks at Powerline (to mention some that had a major influence on the CBS Rathergate story) have wide influence and credibility because of their openness and transparency. And because they are open about criticism of themselves. Yes, they have points of view, but they are open about what those are, unlike MSM "news" types like Rather who still preposterously assert their objectivity, even as they demonstrate the opposite on a daily basis. And these bloggers are open to correction and criticism and actually publish it on their sites, right next to their own stories and assertions, so that readers can follow the debate and the facts as they are revealed. And they actually admit when they have been wrong and refer readers to corrections. On the better sites, the merely angry partisan sniping is largely filtered out, but the dialectical debate is open and transparent. The ones who don't allow this limit their credibility and therefore their influence. The ones who do are trusted and gain influence.

That is the Big Lesson for Old Media. Be open and honest. State your biases and allow the truth to come out, even when it contradicts your original stories or, God forbid, your worldview. Otherwise, you are not interesting to those of us who seek facts and responsible debate, and you become more like the partisan ranter type of blogger, interesting only to those who share your worldview, and influential to rapidly shrinking numbers.

A final point to TV Old Media types, including Fox News and all the cable channels. Dialectic is not about two colorful extremists shouting sound bites at each other, which is all that is currently available on TV "news." It's about open, reasoned minds having to defend their views with reason and facts. And perhaps even evolving their views as a result. Like Buckley's old "Firing Line" show. That actually happens in the blogosphere, but never on TV anymore.

Posted by: freetotem at September 16, 2005 3:52 PM | Permalink

Too little, and too late. You could argue that in the long term it's not too late, but not that it's not too little. CBS News is a name which will live in well-deserved infamy. Now "the people of CBS" can just spread their villanies further, through a new (for them) medium.

Remember that old saying from the early computer days, "To err is human, but to really foul things up takes a computer." That's all that CBS is up to - fouling things up on a bigger scale.

Posted by: big dirigible at September 16, 2005 4:03 PM | Permalink

I'm not in favor of network news stories about ducks. Of course, I don't watch network news anyway, so it's not like my opinion really matters about CBS.

Still, the choice to run a story about ducks hardly seems comparable to the choice to run and stand behind a story based on obviously forged documents. (Or whatever left- or right-friendly Media Scandal -- I'm not making a partisan point.) Transparency about duck coverage is a complete non-issue for me; I'm happy to let them handle that debate internally.

Incidentally, might I suggest that adding Todd Gitlin to the "transparency" mix is hardly moving the discussion of journalism outside of the old boys club...?

Posted by: JSinger at September 16, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink

Jay, I'm not following your complaint about Ciprian-Matthews' explanation for running the duck story, unless it's that she didn't explicitly say that it was a judgement call. IMO, the lady did a good job of covering the thought process: It was two weeks into the story, they felt the time was ripe for a breather, and there was room for one without detracting from their hurricane coverage. Given the circumstances, I'd accept that explanation. (If the story had aired on September 1st, I would be more suspicious.)

Unless you want to argue that she's covering up some sinister conspiracy to get pictures of ducks on prime time news ;-)

------
BTW, I note that the comments to entries on the CBS blog become invisible after they're closed. Yea? Nay?

Posted by: Old Grouch at September 16, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink

To Ron--

The problem with the MSM is not that it's biased. Of course it's biased. It can't help being biased because it's produced and presented by people, who naturally have biases.

The problem is that the MSM won't admit that it's biased. They feed us a cock-and-bull line about how "We at the Metropolis Daily Planet and at WXYZ-TV Channel 83 devote ourselves to giving you an objective look at the day's events."

What utter hogwash.

I think we'd all have a lot more respect for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, and the big-city daily papers if they would just admit the obvious: they are de facto propaganda organs of the Democratic Party.

Bloggers, as a rule, admit they have an agenda, whether it's Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, anarchist, neo-Nazi, whatever. Why can't the MSM?

Posted by: Hale Adams at September 16, 2005 4:34 PM | Permalink

I've gotta say something about the ducks. I used to work at a mid-sized newspaper in the suburbs of a big city. And we got a new editor, and the editor said at one of the first news meetings that it would be really good to have a picture of an animal, like a pet, on Page One whenever possible. People like animals, people get depressed by bad news, thus the search for the perfect pet story was on.

Seriously.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 4:50 PM | Permalink

Yes, the problem with the ducks is that it is a way of treating the audience like poor dumb rubes. Here are some happy thoughts! Smile! Turn that frown upside down! Usually this type of thing is relegated to second grade teachers, and it remains one of the most depressing features of the news landscape. I cannot even imagine how totally demoralizing it would be to go to work, as a journalist, and be told I need to find a lovable pet story for the front page.

The only thing it shows is the level of condescension. It's not just that they think their audience is a bunch of mood-swinging retards who need constant reassurance lest they burst into tears--for all I know, maybe that's true. It's that, in a search for uplift, the best they can do is a piece geared to the mental sophistication and curiosity of a small, witless child.

Posted by: Brian at September 16, 2005 5:25 PM | Permalink

Ron Franscell,

A few observations from a fairly liberal Democrat in Texas: for most members of the public, whatever their political persuasion, the most infuriating aspect of media hubris is journalists' tendency to pursue a meme of their choosing despite the obvious, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Katrina coverage is an excellent example. The prevailing meme now-- on the covers of Newsweek and the Economist, across the nightly broadcasts and the cable networks-- is the "shaming" of "racist America." Well, I live in Texas, and as a liberal nonbeliever I can tell you that I have never been prouder of my countrymen.

The extraordinary compassion, generosity and competence shown by hundreds of thousands of Texans (and others) effectively destroy the myth of America as racist. And yet the Economist, after mentioning in passing Gov. Perry's superb performance, devotes four paragraphs to junk predictions of future racist behavior by Texans, introduced by a Cat 5 storm of journalistic bullshit including vapid opining about how "[In Texas] race is inevitably a factor" and "some Texans (including many in the Republican base) will feel [inclined to send these black victims back to NOLA]...."

It's hard to know which is more astonishing: that comfortable, middle-class white Texans would spontaneously open their homes and schools to some of the most desperate and yes, dangerous, families in this country, or that our political and media elites would persist in painting these heroic people as racists.

The cognitive dissonance here is breathtaking. Americans have already given over $800 million of their own money, built or given tens of thousands of homes and apartments, opened their schools and churches to these poor people, and yet the headlines, op-eds, newscasts and cover stories are covered with "America's Shame" and "Racism!" I know it's a cliche, but in this case the media and political elites really are living in a parallel universe.

How on earth could anyone allege racism about families and church groups that have opened their childrens' schools to kids coming from the worst gang neighborhoods in the country? How many of the Beltway and Manhattan Bloviators would open their own kids' schools to kids from NOLA's 9th Ward?

The effort to paint this as America's "shame" is utterly ridiculous. Also unforgiveable.

Does that help?

thibaud

Posted by: thibaud at September 16, 2005 5:27 PM | Permalink

Ron: You seem troubled by the concern that people will become voluntarily trapped in echo chambers as they seek and find minds of a kind with their own. It is certainly true that people will seek like-minded voices, but whether that is a problem is not so clear. The echo chamber of the MSM, where vast majorities of journalists are affirmed liberals and vote Democratic, doesn't seem to trouble you. Would it prove a categorically different or more dire concern for we simple-minded throngs below?

If you believe yes--that people can't know the "truth" or what's "good for them" when information passes through filters other than that of idealistic, liberal journalists--it only affirms your elitist snobbery, wholely at odds with democracy.

If, however, you believe that echo chambers are bad in any endeavor, then it raises the question of why you or the MSM don't find view-point diversity (e.g., liberal/conservative hiring balances) to be a priority in news offices across the country.

Facts are facts. "Truth" is sketchy. Liberal, conservative or whatever, we all know that a big hurricane happened on the Gulf Coast and that FEMA entered the scene after the storm hit. Didn't matter where I got my news. We all know there's a war in Iraq and that soldiers get killed there. The MSM's failing is in believing that, through good intentions and hard work, it can faithfully present the "true" implications or significance of these facts.

Did FEMA make unjustifiable mistakes? Is the Iraq war going poorly or appropriately apace? Affixing significance to one fact over another, or concluding whether some event or response is appropriate or justifiable, are inherently subjective and, ultimately, individual determinations. Each individual is free to make up his or her own mind based on the information he finds relevant, and seek affirmation from others.

The diversity of blogs allows people to do that. I don't have to "take their word for it." And if I discover that my favorite blogger is not worthy of my trust, I can go freely elsewhere. In the end, popular and compelling opinions will rise to the fore and help dictate policy. Perhaps the MSM can find a new consensus-building role for themselves in that conversation. But the days of the MSM's striving for enlightened consensus by fiat are over.

Posted by: ss at September 16, 2005 5:32 PM | Permalink

Martak's reply to Ron Franscell gets right to the essential point: What sort of arrogance leads someone to decide that a quick turn at journalism school, or working on his college newspaper, qualifies one as any sort of "knight" ready to fight for the common good? The MSM are laughable, and nearing obsolescence, because of the surpassing ignorance of reporters and editors. Having no formal training in military history or tactics, they are quick to pass judgment on every war they cover. Having no knowledge of economics, they do not hesitate to determine when the economy is underperforming or in assigning blame for its underperformance.

By contrast, the blogosphere consists in large measure of people who actually have expertise, and who are willing--eager, in fact--to share their insights and analyses with their readers. Obviously there are also lots of partisan hacks out there, but they're easy to identify and therefore to dismiss. They do not prevent me from finding the best bloggers, precisely because there are no space constraints on the internet. By contrast, every nitwit given space on the op-ed page of my local newspaper denies that space to someone who might have something to say.

So, Ron, no matter how much it may comfort you to think that I'd rather get my information from bloggers than from reporters simply because I want to prevent my biases from being challenged, the simple fact is that I prefer the blogosphere to the MSM out of a Jeffersonian preference for the free flow of ideas and information over a hierarchical transmission structure dominated by people of modest intelligence and inadequate knowledge.

Posted by: Sandy at September 16, 2005 5:36 PM | Permalink

Ron: From a non-newsie blogger, here's a bit of my take:

For most of th blogs and bloggers I give two hoots about, the issue isn't so much "fairness" as "trustworthiness." For many the blogosphere is seen as more trustworthy than MSM because when you go to a blog more often than not the direction from which they come is clear and openly acknowledged but so to is the source material upon which they have based their opinions. When the MSM operates in stereotypical fashion, advertising "all the news that fits" when really offering "all the news that fits [our ideology]," it is again, for me, not an issue of "fair" as much as an issue of "trust." To bring forth only the most recent example off the top of my head, when PM Talibani's expression of thanks and friendship to the US at a joint press conference with President Bush is completely ignored in favor of a Katrina gotcha question (that was routinely shortened to "Bush Takes Blame" in headlines throughout the world) how much confidence should I have in their journalistic standards?

It's a sad state of affairs, but I paid no attention at all to recent polls on the President's performance and reported anger over federal response because I have come to expect the MSM to exagerate anything that reflects poorly against the Administration. Their willingness to swallow up any "Bush bad" narrative (vis a vis Rathergate, early exit poll results in 2004, the impending doom in Iraqi elections, etc. etc. etc.) has led me to discount the majority of negative reporting they do in this regard. And that's sad because if they ever were right chances are I and many other like-minded individuals would just ignore it as more "Bush Derangement Syndrome" on behalf of the MSM. It's almost as if they were never told the story of the boy who cried "wolf."

As for the love-hate symbiotic relationship between MEM and blogosphere, it just that, symbiotic. No blogger that has matured past the adolescent "me He-Man strong" phase could possible do anything but agree that without the reporting source putting leather on pavement his (or her) little (or big) tush in the comfy chair wouldn't have much to write about. However, this understanding runs the risk of equating "news collection" with "media reporting," something the MSM does without thinking. In the new media, while big gatekeepers like CBS and CNN may suffer, there will always be a need for the people who actually do the work of gathering information, such as AP and its stringers. In an analogy, the CIA analysts depend upon the collecting agents for their life blood, but the agents can just as easilly make a living selling to the next higher bidder.

Hmm, I kind-of like where I'm going, so I may let it percolate and write it up myself later. That's part of the new media, too.

Posted by: submandave at September 16, 2005 5:48 PM | Permalink

Ron - an example of a particularly loathesome, yet standard, MSM technique, taken from the Economist article on Katrina. They launch their four paragraphs of speculation with the delightfully vapid sentence, "Race is inevitably a factor." What does this mean? How big a factor-- like casual racial discrimination at, say, a major British weekly, or more like a race riot?

Rather than give actual examples of racist behavior by Texans, they quote Barbara Bush's fatuous but race-neutral line. Nothing more. No evidence, zip, nada. Then they trot out the MSM journalist's favorite weasel words of all: references to "some" or "many", ie to unnamed, unspecified, unquantified subgroups of the journalist's devising: "some Texans (including many in the Republican base)..."

Again, what does this mean? How many racist Texans are denoted by "some" and "many"? Would this number be on the order of, say, 15,000? (This is the population of little Newton County, TX, which has mobilized to create shelters for 1,000 Katrina victims). Or perhaps 3,000? (This is the number of apartments purchased by the Dallas Baptist Association for Katrina families).

And then comes the icing on the MSM cake, the Economist's appeal to an academic authority, who supplies the quote that ties the thesis together: Richard Murray of the U. of Houston predicts that the above Texans "will feel that we've got enough minorities in this state already." Succeeding paragraphs then go further into the blue sky, with speculations about how taking in the refugees will inevitably create "tensions" in other states as well.

So there you have it, folks: even when there is massive, *actual* evidence of myriad acts of selflessness by hundreds of thousands of flesh-and-blood Texans and other Americans, the Economist glides over this to inform us at considerable length that we can expect to see race tensions very soon. Evidence? None. Logic? Nothing but a snippet of an assertion by an academic.

Fake, but accurate.

And this is supposedly quality journalism, from the Economist! Are you beginning to understand why intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt?

Posted by: thibaud at September 16, 2005 6:04 PM | Permalink

Sir Knight

Methinks you have the wrong impression about your profession. Change the world? How about just reporting on it. You aren't the news. It's not about you. Unfortunately, many journalism schools probably agree with you.

Posted by: Swede at September 16, 2005 6:15 PM | Permalink

Ron: since leaving the MSM I've discovered how limited it is in really seeking solutions. Journalists aren't really participants in truth seeking or problem solving. That's because reporting is a one-way communication. The news gets printed, and that's it.

Better truths, better answers come out of a dialectic, out of conversations and a free-flow of ideas. That can't exist the way the media is currently structured.

I think historically that structure was more possible, when the news was basically pamphleteering and conversation in the town square. That time is gone, but the internet and weblogs have resurrected the possibility of the dialectic. I think it's a wonderful development, and I'll bet the dialogue becomes sharper over time as people learn once again to present claims and evidence, and then debate them.

So, reporters aren't knights. The people are in charge of the dialogue. As it should be.

Posted by: JennyD at September 16, 2005 6:33 PM | Permalink

... And that night on the Evening News, John Roberts, speaking for all of you, said “CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.” ...

Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay. Maybe you should take a walk or something. Otherwise, great post, and I hope you get answers to your questions.

Posted by: Bill Munger at September 16, 2005 7:17 PM | Permalink

I don't mean this to sound trollish, I'm honestly wondering: as many have decreed the "MSM" irrelevant/dying/dead/etc., is there intention or hope in your ideas of an improved or new entity to take its place? Many who disdain the MSM allow that it still does produce most of the "raw material". Or is the idea to criticize it and prove it wrong enough to wrangle it into shape? I just don't see where you intend things to lead -- the blogosphere at this point can't stand on its own, with zero material from the MSM - so what's the plan? Maybe it's being yelled loud enough that I'm just missing it, but I don't think I'm the only one...

Posted by: TG at September 16, 2005 7:46 PM | Permalink

Don Quixote inspires not anger, but bemused affection and in some, introspection and humility. Why not Ron?

As mass journalism has become more pervasively dominated by the elite - what used to be called the upper class (not many gumshoes with shiny Columbia degrees back in the day) - so too has the average reader become more reluctant to take at face value reporting such as that noted by Thibaud that, though well-intentioned perhaps, serve coincidentally to keep that reader in their place, much like an abusive husband consistenly belittles his wife to maintain control.

This need not be a conscious motivation of our jounalistic knights errant for the average reader to be nonetheless rightfully wary of this self-perpetuating dynamic.

Posted by: Bezuhov at September 16, 2005 8:14 PM | Permalink

And this is supposedly quality journalism, from the Economist! Are you beginning to understand why intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt?
-- thibaud

Ummm, Thibaud -- Hel-lo ?
This is a red herring if ever I saw one. The Economist is a British publication, staffed by British editors and British reporters. As such, it reflects the typical supercilious attitudes toward both America and Americans held by the British intellectual elite.
It's a very long stretch to cite it as an example of why "intelligent Americans hold so many members of your profession in contempt."
Unless by the phrase "so many members of your profession," you mean the European press.
In which case your comments, while interesting, seem to have landed entirely in the wrong place.
I'm sure there's a thread somewhere about the distorted views of Texas held by journalists in England, or France, or Germany, or Italy. But this isn't it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 16, 2005 9:02 PM | Permalink

Hale has it exactly right. We don't care that news organizations have a political position. What infuriates us about outfits like CBS is that they falsely claim to be an objective news source, when they are really more of an activist organization.

The problem is magnified by the fact that the great unwashed middle, that is to say, those people that do not really pay attention to current events, do not believe something is news, or even true, unless they see it on one of the networks.

Happily, new technologies and market forces are curing the problem.

And if the left should lose control of the media, it is hard to imagine them continuing to draw as many voters.

Posted by: fustian at September 16, 2005 9:21 PM | Permalink

"Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay."

In defense of Jay, I would hope and expect that he didn't just throw that line out off the top of his head. I'm sure he relied on a transcript or tape of the news that particular evening to make his point. Dan Rather didn't anchor the news every night without exception in that period (or in any other). I'd be careful about throwing around to many accusations without studying the original source materials yourself. Making assumptions (Dan Rather was the main CBS anchor therefore Dan Rather hosted that particular night) is the surest way to get yourself in trouble. Don't be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

And if Jay is wrong (which I wouldn't bet on), down with Jay! LOL

Posted by: kcom at September 16, 2005 9:26 PM | Permalink

This one amused me:

As mass journalism has become more pervasively dominated by the elite - what used to be called the upper class (not many gumshoes with shiny Columbia degrees back in the day) - so too has the average reader become more reluctant to take at face value reporting such as that noted by Thibaud.

Last report I saw, students who pay $30,000-$40,000 (accounts vary) for one year of Columbia's graduate school of journalism typically end up starting out at some low-end Gannett newspaper or Clear Channel TV station in some place like East Cowflop, Idaho, for a starting salary of $21,000.
So much for that "shiny degree."
Truth is, the MSM journalists who more than anyone else in recent years have driven right-wingers absolutely batshit come from places like South Dakota State (Brokaw), East Texas Tech (Rather) and a rural high school in Canada (Jennings).
By contrast, at places like the Weekly Standard, the National Review and PowerLine, you can't swing a dead cat without whopping a Harvard graduate in the face.
So can we drop the pretense that the MSM is some sort of "elite," while the opposition is the salt-of-the-earth common folk?
All available evidence suggests the exact opposite.

Steve Lovelady
Managing Editor
CJR Daily
(and proud graduate of Worland, Wyo., high school.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 16, 2005 9:58 PM | Permalink

I'm sure they'd take you back, Steve. There's more than a few of us, I believe, who would be willing to help you out with plane fare. :)

Posted by: kcom at September 16, 2005 10:34 PM | Permalink

"Uhhh, are you sure John Roberts anchored CBS Evening News that night? I thought it was Dan Rather. You may have a little too much news in your diet there, Jay. Maybe you should take a walk or something." Link.

"Moreover, on the CBS Evening News on September 14, John Roberts reported that 'CBS News continues to stand by its reporting.'" Thornburgh report, p. 194.

You're wrong twice, Bill. It was Roberts who said it, not Rather, and I did not say, nor does the report say, that Roberts "anchored" the news that evening, only what he said on the newscast. You came up with "anchors."

And if you weren't so lazy and flippant, you could have put the quoted phrase and "John Roberts" into Google and found the story where he said it.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2005 11:11 PM | Permalink

"Jay, I'm not following your complaint about Ciprian-Matthews' explanation for running the duck story, unless it's that she didn't explicitly say that it was a judgement call. IMO, the lady did a good job of covering the thought process: It was two weeks into the story, they felt the time was ripe for a breather, and there was room for one without detracting from their hurricane coverage. Given the circumstances, I'd accept that explanation."

Well, for starters, I'd like to know why the audience needs to be uplifted, in her estimation.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 16, 2005 11:32 PM | Permalink

I'm honestly wondering: as many have decreed the "MSM" irrelevant/dying/dead/etc., is there intention or hope in your ideas of an improved or new entity to take its place? Many who disdain the MSM allow that it still does produce most of the "raw material".

As far as I'm concerned, the MSM is so corrupt that its total absence would be preferable to its present form.

This may well be on the cards, as the ubiquity of mobile phones that are also recording devices will mean that everyone is potentially a reporter on the spot. For my money, a completely untrained random person on the street is likely to be better than a trained journalist, since at least the bias will be randomised in that case.

The other possibility is that a much smaller, less influential, but more honest remnant of the MSM will remain to be used as a source for bloggers.

I think the future will see a combination of random distributed reporters, bloggers, and newsagency-type syndicated reporters making the news, with readers/viewers choosing their own preferred mix of sources.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at September 17, 2005 12:00 AM | Permalink

I think you're being a bit too generous re the MSM coverage. CBS's hoax was detected first on FreeRepublic, then picked up by blogs like Powerline and Little Green Footballs, and then picked up by Drudge. ABC was the first MSM buffalo to run with the story, and IIRC that was more than 36 hours later, once they realized the story couldn't be buried.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:12 AM | Permalink

"The famous MSM," as Peggy Noonan called it, has become a fictional character in the mind of the cultural right and an object to react against among the bloggers who lean that way-- a discourse star.

Pretty much anything can be said about "it." The MSM is in decline and very powerful. It's irrelevant, and it dominates. It's illegitimate but it still legitimates. It's been "proven" biased but here's more evidence. And on and on.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 12:23 AM | Permalink

Thibaud: "The Katrina coverage is an excellent example."

There's a video tape of a Blanco/Nagin interview after Hurrican IVAN hit last year. New Orleans experienced many of same failures then that Katrina caused, although to a lesser degree. In the interview, Blanco and Nagin admit to poor leadership and promise to retool their evac plan.

CNN will never run that video. But if Blanco/Nagin were Republican, it would be on 24/7.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:31 AM | Permalink

Nightline did the “serious suspicions” story that night (September 9th), and the Washington Post published one the next day.

Just to clarify, my recollection was that these reports were protective fluff pieces along the lines of "partisan fanatics question memo's authenticity".

ABC was the first MSM outlet to treat the story fairly.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 12:53 AM | Permalink

Wrong. You are thinking of the Boston Globe's coverage. The Post, if anything, took cues from the Net and its doubt-raising. But it doesn't fit the narrative so it drops out of memory. See Captains Quarters. Like I wrote, anything can be said about "the MSM." It isn't an empirical category at all. It's a resentment container.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 1:10 AM | Permalink

Fen,do you have any sourcing/attribution for either of your claims?

Jay, isn't part of the problem that if you ask 10 people to define MSM you'll probably get at least five different answers?
I mean is Rush "mainstream"? Fox?

Posted by: Scott Butki at September 17, 2005 1:20 AM | Permalink

Rosen seems obsessed with the fact that CBS reported a story using documents it could not authenticate. To me, the answer is obvious. Like most modern journalists, they don't check facts very closely. Hint: basis for invasion of Iraq. Hint: Effect of Bush tax cuts on deficit.

Rosen's instinct to make much of the blindingly obvious leaves him insensitive to the very slightly non-obvious. He does not seem to have any awareness that those brilliant right-wing bloggers made plenty of incorrect, unsubstantiated, even ridiculous claims in the course of effectively shouting CBS down.

Do they get any similar opprobrium for such brazen hypocrisy?

More important, Rosen doesn't have much to say about the fact that the documents may well have been inauthentic, yet the basic story-- that George Bush failed to complete his time in the Guard-- is very well-substantiated by the Guard records themselves.

Why would someone fabricate documents that said things that Commander Killian's secretary told 60 Minutes the original documents said-- but were also, in her judgment, inauthentic? This is a bit of the story that Rosen is not being upfront about.

Real journalists would ask the question of why fake documents that strongly resembled very real documents were passed to CBS. Bogus journalists navel-gaze.

Worse, they often use other journalists' navels.

Posted by: Charles at September 17, 2005 1:30 AM | Permalink

Wrong. You are thinking of the Boston Globe's coverage. The Post, if anything, took cues from the Net and its doubt-raising.

I stand corrected. And your are right, WaPo actually led the way for the rest of the MSM.

But it doesn't fit the narrative so it drops out of memory

LOL. I guess I deserve that. To be fair, hours seemed like days on the internet back then. From our perspective, we knew by Thursday AM that the docs were fake, and the Post's article didn't appear until Friday, which seemed like a lifetime.

But ABC does stand out in my memory, for something did out of character during all this. I remember being surprised that they weren't covering for CBS. Any recollection of what that might have been?

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 2:04 AM | Permalink

Ron - try reading instapundit.com and powerlineblog.com every day, immediately followed by a mainstream media organ. Take the supreme court confirmation hearings for example. We get the same bare facts in both cases, but the blog links to cutting edge constitutional theory discussion by lawyers and law professors. The mainstream media organ usually includes a couple token 'accepted-meme' quotes from one or two 'experts' looking for paid exposure opportunities, such as TV, and then a lot of ignorant journalist opinion to fill the rest of the paragraphs. The same thing happens with every area of expertise, from analysis of foreign and domestic polls, to military tactics and strategy, to technology or medical issues.

Perhaps we are tired of getting our news from people who don't actuall have any skills or knowledge?

Posted by: Marc Siegel at September 17, 2005 2:37 AM | Permalink

Scott: do you have any sourcing/attribution for either of your claims?

http://texasrainmaker.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-exposes-flaws-in-louisiana.html

"Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans."

This was after Ivan. The similiarities are uncanny, right down to Blanco's apologies and promises to fix what went wrong.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 2:38 AM | Permalink

But ABC does stand out in my memory, for something did out of character during all this.

Jay, now I remember - ABC Nightline came out against CBS on Thursday night, while the Post was Friday's edition. Thats why I credited ABC as the first MSM [even though WaPo released snippets the same night].

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 3:23 AM | Permalink

Marc, that's a good point.

Sometimes I get the impression that journalists are actually proud of their ignorance of the subjects they cover.

It's as if they feel their privileged position exempts them from mortal concerns such as actually knowing what they're talking about.

Posted by: Evil Pundit at September 17, 2005 3:54 AM | Permalink

Jay... this is complete bullshit......

Marian Carr Knox, clerk and typist for Killian, said the documents CBS had were not authentic. One figured she would know.

Knox said ONLY that she didn't type the memos....and that she had typed ones similar to them in the past. (It was never claimed that Knox typed them, and she certainly had no means of "unauthenticating" the documents....)

In other words, you're either a flat out liar, or simply a pawn of far-right wing spin in this case. Either way, you owe your readers a correction and an apology..... and you owe yourself a few hours of time to figure out how the hell you could get something so completely wrong.

Posted by: ami at September 17, 2005 4:35 AM | Permalink

No sensible person is suggesting that blogs will replace large, professionally managed (and paid) journalistic organizations like the New York TImes, CBS, or even Fox news.

While one can certainly imagine an increasing amount of original material coming from freelance blogger types, they're just never going to have either the time or inclination to chase down the story like professional journalists would.

And if they do, at some point, they're no longer bloggers really are they?

What many of us object to is a world in which a handful of left-leaning news organizations, falsely assuming the mantle of objectivity, are able to define what is and isn't news. They tilt the playing field, they set the tone, and they largely control the terms of the discussion.

At least they used to.

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 8:21 AM | Permalink

The fact that Bush-haters are still pushing the "fake but accurate," while MSM folks are unhappy, too, shows that the MSM still hasn't finished covering the story.

The Bush-haters claim that Bush cannot prove where he was, on duty (as the Vietnam war winded down), every day. This seems likely to be true; that there will gaps in proof of where he was. But lack of proof of attendance is not the same as proof of absence.

A similar issue is likely for the Swift Vets against Kerry, although Kerry's lie about Christmas in Cambodia is a bit less defended by the Bush-haters. It's also MUCH less mentioned in MSM.

Jay, you did fine defending yourself on John Roberts -- your quote clearly did NOT mention "anchor". Don't you hate it when somebody adds, or twists, your quote, and then attacks the twist?

But MSM folk do this a lot; "quote," and then 'meaning quote plus/minus' and this plus/minus is terrible because of the future.
The uncertain future, which is NOT a fact.

All the 'racism reporting' about the future is non-factual.

But Jay remains bothered by us MSM-bashers:
"Pretty much anything can be said about "it." The MSM is in decline and very powerful. It's irrelevant, and it dominates. It's illegitimate but it still legitimates. It's been "proven" biased but here's more evidence. And on and on."

What I'd like to say is that the outrage over Katrina had the MSM boring down on and being outraged by Dem Nagin, and on Dem Blanco, and on Rep Bush -- but I can't. They only seemed outraged by Bush.

Facts: NO had a plan, didn't follow it. LA had a plan, didn't follow it. FEMA's plan assumed that the locals had plans they were following -- bad assumption. The FEMA plan was not "robust". Brown should go.
Blanco should go.
Nagin should go -- even if he WAS being good against corruption.

Jay, I'd love to see you defend this (false?) statement about the MSM:
"The MSM attacks Democrats relentlessly and tries to hound them out of office."

I do NOT think any MSM-bashers are saying this. But they, we, I, do say it about MSM and Bush, Rumsfeld, and Brown. (And I agreed on booting Brown). Of course, if you add Rush as MSM, perhaps ...

I want a passionate MSM for the truth, against Bush AND against Kerry, against Reps AND against Dems. Against America's mistakes AND against those of the UN, the French, the Russians, the Chinese; of Amnesty, the Church, and the 1977 Save the Wetlands lawsuit which stopped construction of hurricane resistant barriers in NO. (see here)

In the meantime, I'll be watching more blogs who are honestly against junk, including those against MSM bias.

Posted by: TomGrey at September 17, 2005 8:23 AM | Permalink

ami: "you're either a flat out liar, or simply a pawn of far-right wing spin in this case. Either way, you owe your readers a correction and an apology..... and you owe yourself a few hours of time to figure out how the hell you could get something so completely wrong."

That's the second time I have been urged to take a break in this thread because I get things so wrong.

According to the Thornburgh report, ami, Knox said she typed all of Killian's documents, that she had not typed these and therefore they were not the real thing, but she had seen similar documents before and she believed the contents reflected Killian's views.

The initial CBS response was to note that Knox is not a documents expert, and to note that she confirmed the content. "The argument that content trumps authentication was at the heart of the CBS defense," the report says. Check it yourself, p. 194-95. This is what gave rise to the "fake but accurate" meme that the cultural right fell in love with and still adores, chanting its name on any occasion it can.

My view throughout the controversy has been that CBS would not have done the story unless it had the documents, and thought that they were real. Every bit of evidence suggesting that they were not real undermined the story. I personally believe Bush shirked his Guard duty and benefitted by being a rich, well connected kid. That's exactly why I was so angry with CBS for screwing up the proof, raging at those who pointed it out, and letting Rather bigfoot everyone.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 10:15 AM | Permalink

Fen says: "Jay, now I remember - ABC Nightline came out against CBS on Thursday night, while the Post was Friday's edition. That's why I credited ABC as the first MSM [even though WaPo released snippets the same night].

My post says: "Nightline did the “serious suspicions” story that night (September 9th), and the Washington Post published one the next day."

Sometimes it's good to read the post.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 10:57 AM | Permalink

Jay, Count me among those who can make no sense of your remarks about the duck story. The real shame of the MSM is its pathetic lack of duck stories, due to obvious speciest bias. Despite its claims of objectivity, the MSM has an overt and arrogant pro-human agenda. Why you would disdain this long overdue corrective leaves me quackless.

Ron, I used to ask myself the same questions when I first entered the blogosphere. Trust me: It's a waste of time. Anything you do to try to bridge the gap between journalists and bloggers will just infuriate the crazies. Let them stew.

Steve, You're from Worland? How'd that happen?

Posted by: David Crisp at September 17, 2005 12:57 PM | Permalink

Tom Grey evidently ranks me with the Bush haters because I have taken a very long and careful review of Bush's National Guard record and at the issue of attendance and the requirements for attendance and concluded that George Bush failed to follow the rules so spectacularly that it is fair game to say he deserted.

In other words, if you hold an opinion contrary to what the Republican Party Line is (today), it can only be because one is consumed by irrational hate.

People who believed that global warming was serious problem and that George Bush's abrogration of a campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions contributed to that problems only did so because they hated him.

People who warned that George Bush's tax cuts would lead to massive deficits only did so because they hated him.

People who warned that the evidence of WMD in Iraq was slender at best, and that invading Iraq would turn into a mess did so only because they hated him. George Bush's father, for example, clearly hated him, as did -- all hate, hate, hate.

The reality of course is that no one cares where Bush was "every day." We care where he was on days *when required drills were scheduled.* And it's not simply that we can't find evidence for his presence. It's that the evidence for his absence is a whole lot better.

If it requires hatred to simply ask that people who attain high position not be deserters, alcoholics, people who withhold evidence about DWIs, and so on, then I suppose every employer in America just hates people.

Or else, perhaps Mr. Grey has swallowed the Party line.

Which hypothesis is better supported by the facts at hand?

Posted by: Charles at September 17, 2005 1:23 PM | Permalink

I have critiqued Prof. Rosen's piece from the standpoint of whether it is, itself, good journalism.

The basic issues are these:

1. In formally criticizing journalism that is deficient or erroneous, is there not an ethical responsibility to mention mitigating circumstances? Among these mitigating circumstances are:
(a) Carr's statement that she typed memos very similar to the CBS memos,
(b) authenticated documents are consistent with the Killian memos,
(c) genuine typographic experts (as opposed to people who play them on the Internet) disagree, with some very good people arguing that the typography was consistent with what was available at the time,
(d) Mary Mapes's assertion that the story was rushed into broadcast because of commercial pressures, that the journalists wanted to do the necessary due diligence
(e) the sheer pyrotechnic lunacy of sites like Wizbang, which might lead a harried journalist to prematurely dismiss a challenge.

Mitigating does not equal excusing. It means keeping perspective. One of the tactics used by the right in its assault against reason is to deprive any situation of perspective. People who take food because they are starving are "looters." People who are ill and old and poor and unable to travel away from the site of a disaster are too stupid to deserve any consideration. Journalists who are under intense commercial pressure to put out stories with lots of flash are acting out of venal political motives.

(2) The ethical burden on a professor of journalism to concede that it is his own students in the larger world of journalism that he is bringing the hammer down on (not to mention his own professional organizations that have responded so limply to declining standards).

I am of course not saying that the 60 Minutes team studied under Rosen. I am saying that accepting one's own role in creating a mess is part of the ethical burden one should take on when one attempts a piece like this.

What 60 Minutes did-- rush into print without checking facts-- has been repeated again and again elsewhere. Departments of journalism are fleeing with great speed from accepting responsibility for what their students do. But look at the mess at The Daily Egyptian-- for which I don't think any faculty member has accepted the slightest responsibility-- and one gets a clear sense that this starts in the classroom.

(3) There seems to be an example of indirect sourcing in the article of the kind that journalists know is inappropriate. Sure, everyone does this from time to time. The original is behind a subscription wall or whatever. But when one is writing a piece about the ethics of not checking sources, using a secondary source teaches almost exactly the opposite lesson.

Posted by: Charles at September 17, 2005 2:10 PM | Permalink

I said: "There seems to be an example of indirect sourcing in the article of the kind that journalists know is inappropriate."

I meant: "There seems to be an example of indirect sourcing [by Rosen] in the THREAD COMMENTS of the kind that journalists know is inappropriate."

Posted by: Charles at September 17, 2005 2:15 PM | Permalink

"(c) genuine typographic experts (as opposed to people who play them on the Internet) disagree, with some very good people arguing that the typography was consistent with what was available at the time,"

In all seriousness, name one. And provide their credentials or some links or other sources to examine their credentials. That's a very bold statement you've made, so please back it up.

Posted by: kcom at September 17, 2005 2:32 PM | Permalink

We're not retrying the case in this thread. Forget it. If you have an interest in that take it to e-mail.

For the mess as CBS my responsibility as journalism educator is zero, Charles. I have a responsibility to improve the quality of professional practice, which I express by criticizing professional practice.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 2:52 PM | Permalink

My post says: "Nightline did the “serious suspicions” story that night (September 9th), and the Washington Post published one the next day."
Sometimes it's good to read the post.

I don't follow the MSM alphabets, and don't automatically associate ABC with "Nightline". Whats with the hostility? Do you really feel it necessary to start up a flamewar over such a minor point? I don't, but will return serve if you insist...

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 5:31 PM | Permalink

My view throughout the controversy has been that CBS would not have done the story unless it had the documents, and thought that they were real.

I disagree. Mapes did 5 years research for that CBS story. And internal experts at CBS raised doubts about the memo's authenticity. Remember the context - the MSM was getting beat up & the Kery campaign was hemmoraging, all because neither could credibly address the Swiftboat attacks. I think CBS knowingly used false documents to move the public's focus away from the swiftboat vets - to them, the risk of getting caught was far outweighed by the beating the MSM & Kerry were getting re the Swifties.

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 5:47 PM | Permalink

Chrales: One of the tactics used by the right in its assault against reason is to deprive any situation of perspective. People who take food because they are starving are "looters."

That's a bit of a stretch. No one from the right condemns people for looting food & water in a natural disaster. Flat screen tvs are another matter. The way you twisted that to fit into your meme caused me to check out the rest of your rebutal to Jay on your site:

They shouldn't have been used as evidence by CBS, but neither are they obviously fake.

Unlike the crackpots, when CBS makes a mistake, they undergo some accountability.

Captain's Quarters, another crackpot site

What "mitigating circumstances" caused you to print such hysterical nonsense? Do you not see that statements like that destroy any credibility your audience might lend you in your critique of Jay's piece?

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 6:13 PM | Permalink

Yeah, I agree with Fen.

These are two almost incontrovertable facts:

1. The Rather documents are fake.
2. CBS knew this and went ahead anyway because of their deep-seated political bias.

If you have the slightest trouble with either of these statements, please just go away now and come back when you're prepared to be serious. It is simply a complete waste of time to discuss the Rather incident with someone unwilling to be simply rational.

Of the two obvious statements above, the second is the hardest to prove definitively, since there is another explanation that could also fit the facts: that the CBS people involved with this story are stunningly, mind-bendingly stupid. And while this view may yet carry the day, one has to point out that Mapes and the Dan have been consistently mind-bendingly stupid on only one side. They were somehow able to summon enough perspicacity to not fall for those scurrilous Swift Boat charges now, weren't they? If it were simply the case that CBS was impartially engaged in whoring themselves to a mass audience that could only be held by sensational tabloid charges and counter-charges, the Swift Boat story was simply made to order.

No, I'm sorry.

As appealing as is the "mind-bendingly stupid" theory, it alone cannot explain all the facts, although it goes at least part way towards explaining how they thought they could get away with this. To completely explain the whole RatherGate mess, though, you must blend in equal measure: mind-bending stupidity, insufferable arrogance, with blind partisanship and then stir in a dollop of failure to acknowledge the rise of the internet.

Sure, I can understand that Mary Mapes might not be much of a computer expert and may not have initially looked closely enough at the documents she got from Bill "Looney Tunes" Burkett. But, once their own "experts" refused to vet the documents, she must have known. And the Dan must have known. And they decided to do it anyway. Because they thought they could get away with it. And why wouldn't they? Who's going to hold CBS news accountable? You'd have to be some whack job, sitting alone in your living room typing away at a computer in your jammies to think that there was anything to be done.

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 6:16 PM | Permalink

Citizen Journalism on Lake Wobegon. These two links are a perfect match with your post and the comments (especially th eone on top about computer trainers!). Eat them whole.

Posted by: coturnix at September 17, 2005 6:19 PM | Permalink

If you have the slightest trouble with either of these statements, please just go away now and come back when you're prepared to be serious. It is simply a complete waste of time to discuss the Rather incident with someone unwilling to be simply rational.

If you continue to write posts with passages like that, they will go away. I hope that's clear enough.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 6:24 PM | Permalink

And why, might I ask?

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 6:36 PM | Permalink

And why, might I ask?

Ah c'mon fustian, you know the rules: inflammatory statements are only allowed for the Left. ;)

Posted by: Fen at September 17, 2005 6:52 PM | Permalink

Grandpa said it. "You can't polish a turd!"

Posted by: Cec at September 17, 2005 7:21 PM | Permalink

Jay, actually I don't know the rules. I followed a link here from elsewhere. Is it just the first paragraph that is so offensive or is it the whole thing?

I admit to having a little fun writing it, and it may be a little over the top, but there are semi-serious points made within.

One of the things that is so frustrating with many political arguments is that often there are positions that seem so clear that one simply can't imagine principled opposition.

Your own initial post points out the incredible behavior of CBS as the story collapsed and wonders why. If you simply drop the idea that CBS was truly interested in the truth, the mystery of their behavior completely disappears.

Burkett is alledged to have offered the same documents to all of the large media outlets and they all passed on them. I don't have a link, but my recollection is that a few of these outlets admitted that the reason they passed was that the "story" was so obviously fake.

You didn't mention it, but one of the most telling points against the whole CBS truth teller theory was that a condition of Burkett giving the fake documents to CBS was that CBS put Burkett in touch with someone high up in the Kerry campaign. And CBS DID IT!

And my recollection was that Kerry was out on the stump really pushing the National Guard story in the run-up to the CBS story in what looked very much like coordination with CBS.

This behavior was so egregious that there was talk at the time of legal consequences. In the same way your lawyer recommends you admit to nothing at the scene of a traffic accident, you can imagine that CBS might be very reticent to make certain admissions until the legal issues were fully resolved. I unfortunately do not remember the legal theories involved, and I recall that even some conservative legal opinion was that CBS had nothing to worry about, but lawyers are still lawyers and, as a general rule, they are nothing if not cautious.

Plus there was the little matter of Dan Rather's reputation. Which was a silly thing to worry about really since it is largely gone anyway and at such a huge cost to the network. I haven't looked at their ratings, but I cannot imagine but that they have been heavily impacted. From my own acquaintance, I know of more than one person that was so offended by CBS in this matter that they will not even watch football on that network. If your business model requires a large audience, it seems foolish to needlessly alienate just over half of it.

Do you really, in your heart of hearts believe that CBS wasn't actively trying to get Kerry elected with this story?

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 7:33 PM | Permalink

If you continue to write posts with passages like that, they will go away. I hope that's clear enough.

What about Charles' posts, with passages like "the sheer pyrotechnic lunacy of sites like Wizbang"? Will his posts "go away", too?

Or is there one rule for the Left and a different rule for the Right?

Posted by: Evil Pundit at September 17, 2005 7:50 PM | Permalink

According to the Thornburgh report, ami, Knox said she typed all of Killian's documents, that she had not typed these and therefore they were not the real thing, but she had seen similar documents before and she believed the contents reflected Killian's views.

Knox claimed she typed all of Killian's official documents, Jay. The "killian memos" were not, and has never been represented as "official" government documents. Instead, they were reported as being from Killian's private files. (She also claimed to have typed some "private" memos as well, but was certainly not in a position to state that Killian did not have another "stash". Given the highly sensitive nature of the "memos" it is not unlikely that Killian would have kept them off-base.)

Anyone with military experience will tell you that military personnel are urged to keep their own set of records, in case the military bureaucracy screwed things up. (This would include "cya" memos to file, which these memos were purported to be.) Given the kind of person that Killian is reported to have been, and the nature of his job (squadron commander for the 111th FIS, whose primary duties were the training of fighter pilots---a fairly dangerous sounding job, and one that would leave his family at the mercy of the Air Force bureaucracy should he have had a fatal training accident) it is virtually inconceivable that Killian did not keep his own set of records.

I would also suggest that you not rely upon the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, which contain numerous factual errors. (For instance, T/B claimed that there were no "proportionate spaced Texas Air National Guard records from that era --- but the AP's FOIA lawsuit resulted in the release of one such document from February 1971, i.e. a year before the supposed "impossible to create" on a typewriter documents were dated (see page 6 of http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/24sep04release.pdf). Numerous other factual errors are detailed at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/10/183312/357 )

My view throughout the controversy has been that CBS would not have done the story unless it had the documents, and thought that they were real. Every bit of evidence suggesting that they were not real undermined the story.

actually, according to the Thornburgh - Boccardi report (not that its reliable) Mapes had been working on the Barnes angle of the story, and when the "killian memos", added that to the story.

More importantly, all of the "evidence" that the memos are not genuine is pretty nonsensical. Dr. David Hailey's research on the memos establishes pretty clearly that the memos were typewritten --- the rebuttal to Hailey's claims is that the evidence he cites is based on the fact that the documents were "reproduced" so many times. Unfortunately, that particular argument also destroys the "technical" arguments for the "forged documents" advocates --- if reproduction can distort the image sufficiently to discredit Hailey's evidence, its impossible to discuss issues like "character spacing" and "pseudo-kerning" as well. The failure to conform to official military formats is a red-herring, because these were not official military documents. (indeed, if "failure to conform" was determinative, there are documents released by the Bush administration that would be considered "fake" -- see http://www.glcq.com/trans.htm for a discussion of the anomolies that occurred in the documents concerning Bush's "transfer request".)

In fact, there is no really good reason not to consider the "Killian memos" authentic. The failure to properly determine the "chain of custody" prior to using them --- and then subsequently finding out that their source for the memos had lied about their origins, was the only reason CBS retracted the story. CBS rushed the story because of competitive pressure -- they knew that USA Today also had copies of the memos, and was working on the story --- and that they were in danger of losing their scoop.

Posted by: ami at September 17, 2005 9:18 PM | Permalink

ami: I followed a few of your links and eventually ended up at wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_memos.

They have a fairly extensive passage covering this issue and they unemotionally cover all sides pretty well (as I understand them, certainly). They are pretty definitive on the documents, though:

No generally recognized document experts have positively authenticated the memos. Several individuals with expertise in typewriters or computer typography regard the documents as forgeries based on typographical analysis. These include Peter Tytell, a document examiner and typewriter expert [67], Thomas Phinney, an Adobe computer font expert [68], and Joseph Newcomer, a computer typography pioneer and Windows typography expert [69].

As for Knox, the relevant passage, I think is this one:

Last week, Knox said she had no firsthand knowledge of Bush's time with the Texas Air National Guard, although she did recall a culture of special treatment for the sons of prominent people, such as Bush and others.

and:

Also, she said the font used for the documents did not match fonts used on either the manual Olympia or IBM Selectric typewriters she used while working there.

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 10:05 PM | Permalink

These are two almost incontrovertable facts:
1. The Rather documents are fake.
2. CBS knew this and went ahead anyway because of their deep-seated political bias.
If you have the slightest trouble with either of these statements, please just go away now ....
--Fustian

I know it's hard for you to grasp that what you perceive as received wisdom is not so perceived by others, Fustian. But the Thornburgh-Bocardi Commission, for one, had serious "trouble" with both of those statements -- and so do I. However -- and this too must come as a shock -- I'm not going away. It isn't that easy, pal. This isn't your sandbox -- it's Jay's sandbox -- so you can't throw anyone out. Whereas he can. To date, however, he has demonstrated olympian restraint, so you're probably safe.

Tom Grey: So, let's do a hypothetical here: If a person observes that five of the top eight FEMA officials had no experience in either emergency management or disaster response, but were instead political hacks and cronies deposited on the federal payroll -- your tax dollars at work, by the way -- then, that makes that person a "Bush-hater" ? Or maybe -- just maybe -- that makes that person "one pissed-off taxpayer" ??

Steve, You're from Worland? How'd that happen? -- David Crisp.

I have to blame my parents, Dave. I woke up one morning at age three and there I was. Truth to tell, it was a good place to grow up. I even got to play high school football against Dick Cheney. He was a fat linebacker for a team from a town with 30,000 population and I was a skinny pass receiver for a team from a town with 5,000 population. (We kicked their ass and went on to win the state championship. It was, as they say, the best of times.)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 17, 2005 10:06 PM | Permalink

Steve Lovelady,

"Unless by the phrase "so many members of your profession," you mean the European press.
In which case your comments, while interesting, seem to have landed entirely in the wrong place.
I'm sure there's a thread somewhere about the distorted views of Texas held by journalists in England, or France, or Germany, or Italy. But this isn't it."

I know that cuteness is your desired mode, but please at least try not to be fatuous in the bargain. I stated very clearly in my first post that I was referring mainly to the US media. I deliberately selected the Economist as a way of making the point that even that major quality news publication which, of all the English-language, US-focused mainstream press, is the most sympathetic to the Bush administration-- more so by far than Newsweek or Time or the NYT or WaPo or LA Times-- that even this right-of-center, boring, bland publication is susceptible to the notorious media habit of dressing up straight news reports with speculative bullshit. The Texans-as-uberracists meme was more than bullshit. It was a disgusting slur upon hundreds of thousands of heroic people. And of course, a vicious lie. And on top of that, it was a huge distraction from the main story, which was the spectacularly competent, efficient, rapid and generous response across Texas to brethren in need.

I thought that Ron might appreciate the point, though apparently it was lost on you: if even the Economist plays these games, then just imagine what crap is constantly being dished out by less responsible and sober publications.

Got that?

Posted by: thibaud at September 17, 2005 10:28 PM | Permalink

The left says "but the story was true, so why do problems with documents ultimately matter?" The right cannot conceive of alternatives to: "they went with the fakes deliberately to get Bush." When I write about the CBS case both groups tend to be get pissed, or at the very least express their dissatisfaction. That's because I think the screw ups with the documents matter, and I think Sixty Minutes thought they "had it," a legitimate story with legitimate proof. If you cannot respect my position, that's fine, you really don't have to. Pretending that I have no grounds for it, and that any sane person would agree with you is just obnoxious.

Check out the comments at the Huffington Post, if you like.

I don't think this piece quite works, however. Because what I really wanted to emphasize was the public silence of CBS News employees who were not involved in the story at all, but fully capable of seeing what was happening. Did this seem to them, on reflection, to have been wise? Was it journalistic of them? In a way it's a question about the real meaning of loyalty. But that doesn't quite come through. And while I almost had the connection between it and "transparency," that too doesn't quite appear from the trays in the darkroom.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 10:51 PM | Permalink

Actually, I do think it's possible that CBS believed the documents were authentic. When I first read about the documents, before I know their authenticity was in question, I thought, "This doesn't advance the story very far."

So when I heard there were claims the documents were forgeries, I initially dismissed the allegations. I figured anybody who would go to the trouble of forging a document would put a bit more smoke in the barrel.

Then I read the Thornburgh report. When I got to the part just before the show aired, I couldn't help putting myself in CBS' shoes: You're in full-story mode, you're on deadline, the adrenaline's pumping, you've been tracking the story for a few years, you got documents, you've got experts who (listened to selectively) sort of back your case, the White House isn't denying anything, the whole paper trail really doesn't tell you much that you didn't already know from other sources -- why not go with it?

The thought made my palms sweat. I know what it feels like to want a story more than I want the truth. I've never made a mistake like that and, Lord willing, I never will. But could it happen? Oh, yeah.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 17, 2005 10:54 PM | Permalink

They placed a lot of stock in the White House not denying. This was unwise. It is characteristic of the Bush team to give out no information. Not denying was just that: no information in it. But to the heads at CBS this was big time evidence that they were right.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 11:00 PM | Permalink

But the Thornburgh-Bocardi Commission, for one, had serious "trouble" with both of those statements

Which is why so many people viewed it as a corporate whitewash.

I mean, cmon. If the documents could possibly have been authenticated, there was no need for the Thornburgh-Bocardi commission, all of those CBS news execs would still be spinning the news, and Kerry would have been President.

Here's wikipedia again talking about the Thornburgh report:

The panel did not undertake a thorough examination of the authenticity of the Killian documents, but consulted Peter Tytell, a New York City-based forensic document examiner and typewriter and typography expert who analyzed the typeface of the documents. Tytell concluded that the documents were not produced on a typewriter in the early 1970s but were produced on a computer in a Times New Roman typestyle that would not have been available at that time.

The panel found Tytell's analysis to be sound, but did not reach a conclusion on whether his analysis was correct overall.

As I understand this:
1. Tytell stated definitively that the documents were fakes.
2. The panel believes Tytell's analysis to be sound.
3. The panel refuses to conclude that the documents are fakes.

There is a word for this: whitewash.

There just isn't any leg to stand on with respect to the documents. They were faked. Period. Time to move on.

That doesn't mean that Bush dotted every i and crossed every t in "completing" his national guard service. As I understand it, there just isn't enough evidence to prove it either way. People are pretty much free to believe what they want to believe on this issue as far as the actual evidence goes.

But, here's the thing. Even if true, it makes no difference to almost all of Bush's supporters. The story on Bush is that as a youth he was a screw-up. This has been vetted already. Most of us understand that he was a little wild as a young man and that as an adult he made a decision to get serious, and that's the guy we're dealing with.

And the chicken hawk angle doesn't really matter that much to most of us either. Viet Nam was a complicated affair. Even conservatives have mixed feelings about it. And, besides, anyone that knows anything about fighter planes knows that this is not an activity for cowards.

You want to rattle us about Bush, then prove to us he's started drinking again. Or that he's taking cash payments from South American drug lords to keep the borders open. That'll get our attention.

This ANG story only meant something to you guys.

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 11:13 PM | Permalink

Then I read the Thornburgh report. When I got to the part just before the show aired, I couldn't help putting myself in CBS' shoes: You're in full-story mode, you're on deadline, the adrenaline's pumping, you've been tracking the story for a few years, you got documents, you've got experts who (listened to selectively) sort of back your case, the White House isn't denying anything, the whole paper trail really doesn't tell you much that you didn't already know from other sources -- why not go with it?

But here's the thing. They faced a similar situation with the Swift Boat story. Explosive charges. This was a huge story. If true, it could change the election.

If CBS was truly unbiased, this story should have caused those same sweaty palms.

But they held off on that story.

Of course, on the Swift Boat side, you've got serious guys like Houston attorney John O'Neil and Rear-Admiral Roy Hoffman.

On the Killian side, you've got nut-job Burkett and the mysterious "Lucy Ramirez".

So, of course, CBS went with the nut-job.

They wanna play gotcha with Bush, but they don't with Kerry.

Could it be...liberal bias?

Posted by: fustian at September 17, 2005 11:37 PM | Permalink

I agree with Fustian about 99%, but I want to draw two distinctions:

1) I do not think that a meaningful discussion can proceed without agreement on Fustian's point #1. Without resort to freshman-year late-night epistemological tricks, the documents are, well beyond any reasonable doubt, fake. It is disturbing to believe that there is any meaningful segment of the blogospheriat that can honestly deny this.

2) As to Fustian's second point, however, I would suggest that Black Rock is not monolithic, and would eschew a sweeping statement such as "CBS knew this..." I suspect that very different processes were going on for Mapes, Rather, Heyward, Roberts, et al. While I agree with Fustian that the ultimate recipe must have included "mind-bending stupidity, insufferable arrogance, with blind partisanship and ... a dollop of failure to acknowledge the rise of the internet," I think that different players brought each of these ingredients to the table in different measure. Therefore, I am as curious as Jay to imagine what was going in the minds of some of the "bystanders" at Black Rock.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 17, 2005 11:42 PM | Permalink

I have no idea. Seriously. That's why I wrote my piece. It seems to me they ceased to be journalists somehow. They were all bigfooted by Rather and corporate, I guess. But why did they permit themselves to be bigfooted? Only someone way more familiar with the people inside CBS can answer that. When John Roberts said on September 14, "CBS News continues to stand by its reporting," was he continuing to stand by it? And if he was, why? There is no special radar or faculty of judgment that Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post has that John Roberts of CBS lacks.

“I had serious suspicions about the authenticity of the documents on the morning after they were aired,” said Dobbs.

It's a mystery what the bystanders were thinking. Loyalty to CBS News and colleagues doesn't explain it. For it would have been an act of loyalty to speak out. Of course, many things I think mysterious and hard to explain are to others easily explained. That's been one of the themes of my intellectual life, since way before blogging.

By the way, I believe the documents are fake, and to the extent that I approached it with a "rooting" interest, I wanted them to be real. I don't know why the panel was reluctant to say that. Many of you seem to know with great certainty why, but there, you see? Another mystery.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 17, 2005 11:51 PM | Permalink

Jay -- Can I offer one possibility about what was happening at Black Rock? Perhaps you give "journalists" too much credit. And I don't mean that as a snarky MSM-bashing comment. I am a scientist, yet I am not infrequently surprised by the shallowness of thinking and acceptance of received wisdom of some of my most successful colleagues. (At the same time I am also amazed, impressed, and challenged by the thoughtfulness of many other colleagues).

I have noticed that journalists (again, not alone amongst professionals), tend to be very susceptible to the Argument from Authority. In fact, the more I think about it, this may be a central flaw with the American practice of credentialized professionalism.

Thus, journalists perpetuate the practice of taking Administration (i.e., authority) non-comments as confirmation of ridiculous trash, instead of applying their own common sense or curiosity. I believe this is what happened in the Newsweek Koran-flushing incident.

We, the salivating morons of the MSM-bashing right, might have many flaws, but at the very least we are used to flexing our investigative muscles, as we have a lifetime (much of it pre-internet) of trying to learn the truth from a variety of sources. In the MSM, too often "investigation" simply means taking dictation from someone with a suitable agenda. Just ask Bob Woodward.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 18, 2005 12:13 AM | Permalink

As for the panel, remember that they were hired by CBS. They were CBS employees. Boccardi was presumably protecting his profession and his friends, but I really don't have a strong sense of him and I could easily be wrong. However, I strongly suspect that Thornburgh was acting as an outstanding corporate counsel for his client, presenting (what he perceived to be) the best possible case. Especially given the possibility of CBS' legal exposure from several angles, it would have been against his professional ethics to make a blanket admission, even if that resulted in some tortuous (il)logic. This fact, all the more so, does not excuse anyone from suspending their own judgement and relying on their report as the last word on the matter, as far too many "journalists" have been more than willing to do.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 18, 2005 12:24 AM | Permalink

Oh, come on, Neuro-conservative.
Boccardi was, and is, the thoroughly apolitical former head of AP.
Thornburgh was, and is, a lifelong Republican who served as a relentlessly conservative governor of Pennsylvania and then as Attorney General for a Republican administration.
Neither of these guys is a lefty moonbat. If anything, taken together, they have a distinctly rightist tinge to them.
Which is not entirely surprising, since they were appointed by Leslie Moonves, head of CBS, who in turn reports to Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom and acknowledged Bush supporter.
Let's get real here about who exactly is whom.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 18, 2005 12:54 AM | Permalink

Steve -- Please go back and read my post. I never suggested that B or T was a lefty moonbat. My surmise about their motivations was not based on their politics at all, but rather their professional roles, both prior to and during their period of employment by CBS. BTW -- should read: "who exactly is who."

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 18, 2005 1:07 AM | Permalink

Just a quick aside: the CBS employees who were let go [only Mapes was "fired"]. What ever happened there? I heard they were filing suit but it dropped off the rader.

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 2:41 AM | Permalink

Donald Crisp wrote:

Then I read the Thornburgh report. When I got to the part just before the show aired, I couldn't help putting myself in CBS' shoes: You're in full-story mode, you're on deadline, the adrenaline's pumping, you've been tracking the story for a few years, you got documents, you've got experts who (listened to selectively) sort of back your case, the White House isn't denying anything, the whole paper trail really doesn't tell you much that you didn't already know from other sources -- why not go with it?

To which fustian responded....

But here's the thing. They faced a similar situation with the Swift Boat story. Explosive charges. This was a huge story. If true, it could change the election. If CBS was truly unbiased, this story should have caused those same sweaty palms.

This is an amazing response which demonstrates the degree to which ideological bias leads to complete incoherence.

Crisps point was that the Killian memos did not really move the story forward --- they simply provided a few extra details to flesh out the "Bush/AWOL" narrative that had already been established through examination of the documents released by the White House. The memos were, for all intents and purposes all "sizzle" --- the steak was there already.

The Swift Boat Liars story, on the other hand, had virtually no documentary back-up (and when a search of the records was done, the SB Liars were shown to be liars.) Their accusations, in fact, directly contradicted Kerry's military records, and were without foundation.

(The Barnes interview, on the other hand, could be compared to the Swift Boat Liars stuff --- Barnes had no documentary evidence to back up his claim other than the "indirect" evidence that showed that Bush was not terribly qualified, and that Staudt's highly exaggerated written endorsement of Bush made no sense whatsoever, when one looks at Bush's record up until that point in his life (which made his denial of Barnes' story far less than credible). And Barnes' accusation itself wasn't exactly news, since Barnes had told the same story under oath previously. )

Posted by: ami at September 18, 2005 3:30 AM | Permalink

It's a mystery what the bystanders were thinking. Loyalty to CBS News and colleagues doesn't explain it. For it would have been an act of loyalty to speak out. Of course, many things I think mysterious and hard to explain are to others easily explained. That's been one of the themes of my intellectual life, since way before blogging.

its really not much of a mystery.

1) The source of the accusations of forgery were right-wing bloggers who have hated CBS and Rather for decades---and their arguments weren't holding any water.

2) Mapes was a highly respected producer whose previous story for 60 Minutes II was "Abu Ghraib". There was no reason to question her competence or integrity, and Mapes was standing by the story.

You're an "academic" Jay. If some bunch of right-wing nutcases attacked a respected colleague of yours in a similar fashion, how would you react to their accusations?

Posted by: ami at September 18, 2005 3:46 AM | Permalink

Re: Whitehouse policy of not commenting. It is part of a larger strategy of limiting spin-doctoring. Other aspects of the strategy? Keep the verbiage to a minimum. The less said, the better. Rely on safe, mundane words, phrases & concepts not amenable to “interpretation.” Try to get creative & the spinmasters will trounce. This is what it has come to. But the MSM is not biased. Oh, no.

Posted by: john moulder at September 18, 2005 8:19 AM | Permalink

This is an amazing response which demonstrates the degree to which ideological bias leads to complete incoherence.

The Swift Boat Liars story, on the other hand, had virtually no documentary back-up (and when a search of the records was done, the SB Liars were shown to be liars.) Their accusations, in fact, directly contradicted Kerry's military records, and were without foundation.

So how was Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia Hoax allowed to hang out there for 20+ years? Not one "investigative journalist" saw fit to challenge it. And almost every officer in Kerry's unit and chain of command backed up the Swiftie charges. Note that Kerry could have filed suit against them...but didn't - something about the discovery process scared him off.

ideological bias leads to complete incoherence....The Swift Boat Liars

LOL. You're not blinded. Oh no. Not you.

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 8:36 AM | Permalink

/atribs fixed

This is an amazing response which demonstrates the degree to which ideological bias leads to complete incoherence.

The Swift Boat Liars story, on the other hand, had virtually no documentary back-up (and when a search of the records was done, the SB Liars were shown to be liars.) Their accusations, in fact, directly contradicted Kerry's military records, and were without foundation.

So how was Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia Hoax allowed to hang out there for 20+ years? Not one "investigative journalist" saw fit to challenge it. And almost every officer in Kerry's unit and chain of command backed up the Swiftie charges. Note that Kerry could have filed suit against them...but didn't - something about the discovery process scared him off.

ideological bias leads to complete incoherence....The Swift Boat Liars

LOL. You're not blinded. Oh no. Not you.

As for CBS, reporting on the Swifties was limited to:

"The Swiftboat Vets have been discredited"

[listeners lean in for details]

"Thats right Bob, completely discredited. Now for the weather"

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 8:41 AM | Permalink

CBS wants to manage their blog like they manage their “news.” They want to use the blog to appear responsive. Problem is, with a blog they’ll have to really be responsive or it’ll work against them. That’s why I don’t think it’s gonna work. Asking CBS to be responsive is like asking a donkey to play taps through its butt. I’ll go back there in a month or 2 to see what has happened. My guess? Sometime in the not too distant future the blog will be discontinued because of “trolls.” But they will have “tried.”

Posted by: john moulder at September 18, 2005 8:59 AM | Permalink

I actually believe there is truth in the Bush National Guard scandal but many people seem highly motivated to hide it. It bothers me that a celebrated veteran, John Kerry, had his reputation smeared while a Republican president who never saw combat is exonerated from his dubious service. The balance of power between Democrats and Republicans has reached a dangerous tipping point which ultimately will damage our political system beyond repair.

Posted by: L Woodgeard at September 18, 2005 9:24 AM | Permalink

Tying back into Jay's points: Like him, I had an interest in Bush's Guard background. But it became obvious that any reporting from the MSM would be distorted - weasel words without facts designed to leave an unfavorable impression, censorship by ommision in not contacting sources who could verify Bush's claims, etc. The MSM, with their history/pattern of bias and their zeal to get Bush, has effectively immunized Bush from all criticism.

I've been an avid news consumer since Dessert Shield [back when CNN was an honest broker]. Like others on this thread, I have continually given the MSM the benefit of the doubt when they got the facts wrong. But across the last 15 years, this has become a pattern that disturbed me enough to seek out alternative sources of information. Like so many others, the internet confirmed my suspiscions that I was being spoonfed propaganda and embarrassed me. Just one example:

Max Cleland. The MSM grants him moral authority by introducing him as "a vietnam hero who left 3 limbs on the battlefield". Those sound like weasel-words to me, so I go to the internet to discover Cleland's own account of events: while hopping off a helo on his way to the O-club, he noticed a grenade had slipped from a fellow soldier's gear. Cleland, unaware that it was live, reached down to retrieve it [its not like he dived on it to protect others] and BOOM! Tragic yes, bit hardly heroic. And I had to do my own research on the internet to get the truth behind the MSM version.

Thats just one of hundreds of examples. The bottom line is I quit trusting the MSM several years ago. I no longer tune into ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/NYT because they have a history and pattern of wasting my time with distortions and half-truths that dovetail with their agenda. I would love to have a media that presented both sides of an issue, but the MSM in its arrogance will never wake up. Like Ami and others here, they are arrogant and blind to their bias. I no longer give the MSM any benefit of doubt, I automatically assume they are liars and start from that point as a news consumer. When I hunger for information, I am stuck with FOX's right-wing tilt, Wapo's more subtle leftism, and the blogosphere. And left with nothing but contempt for those who call themselves "journalists".

I fear Jay's endevours are wasted, his points fall on deaf ears. There will be no change or accountability, no lessons learned, because the MSM has become blind, deaf, and stupid. I don't need the MSM - no news is better than corrupted news.

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 9:49 AM | Permalink

Reading this thread makes me feel like I'm some old age home near the Mason-Dixon line, in about 1910, listening to all the clients fight the Civil War over and over again.

I think that all the ideology should be swept aside, because I think the real heart and mind of TV news was captured in the comment by Donald Crisp:

Then I read the Thornburgh report. When I got to the part just before the show aired, I couldn't help putting myself in CBS' shoes: You're in full-story mode, you're on deadline, the adrenaline's pumping, you've been tracking the story for a few years, you got documents, you've got experts who (listened to selectively) sort of back your case, the White House isn't denying anything, the whole paper trail really doesn't tell you much that you didn't already know from other sources -- why not go with it?

It's the story. It's a great story. It seems 95 percent nailed down. And as for the White House, don't you remember Watergate? The non-denial denial? That's what this is, yeah, a new version of the non-denial denial.

Unfortunately, all of CBS's history and all the rest of the history of the MSM sort of crashed around this bad decision.

But I'm bored with this never-ending conversation. What next?

Posted by: JennyD at September 18, 2005 10:42 AM | Permalink

Jay,

First of all, thanks for the Open Letter to CBS News that we posted on Friday. I was proud to have it on Public Eye and it helped get us off to a frisky start.

I say that event though you essentially called me a liar in your piece; I gave an account of Public Eye came to be and you said "sounds like a party line to me." First of all you're wrong, my history was accurate. More importantly, as a guardian of standards, did you even have a glimmer of evidence of or reporting that I was being dishonest -- or did it just "sound" that way to you? Obviously, I knew as I wrote that piece that many readers would dismiss it as corporate propaganda, as I noted in the piece itself. Anyway, small point.

I also thought you were gratuitously snarky on the ducks piece, nasty about the senior producer who talked about it without articulating any actual argument as to why she deserved your personal and condescending scorn.

But those are minor points and perhaps I should have responded on Public Eye, but we had a lot of business to get through during launch week (and for the record, though I do post on Public Eye, I am not an official Eyeballer; I am the editor who has Public Eye in my portfolio). It was good to run your piece and that's the bottom line.

Other points: the vitriol with which people complain about tech problems stuns me, frankly. Even this comment, I'm sure, will generate more comments that I and CBS "just don't get it." Inevitable?

One thing that really struck me in the responses here is a comment by Billy Hollis above: "The biggest word missing from this essay is "humility". It's not enough to say that others know more than mainstream journalists - at some level they realize that. What mainstream journalists have to achieve in their own minds is the humility to actually listen to others who know more when those journalists don't like what they are hearing."

I think the comment applies to your essay only slightly, but it fits many of the comments Publc Eye has received, and blogs about it elsewhere. I know there is no such thing as "the blog community", but thre is a level of smugness, self-importance, sanctimony and intolerance-disguised as openness that confuses me. It's like, "Blog my way and communicate my way or you are an idiot." Sometimes, thatis just a variant of,"Agree with me or you're an idiot" or as is the linguisitc morn now, "Agree with me or you'r biased."

Well, Public Eye is not just a blog; it is a really new invention, nothing like it exists. We've been open about learning as we go and we've been open wanting to hear about our shortcomings in format, mechanics and substance. 80 percent of the time, that ain't good enough. But the othe 20 percent has been fantastically satisfying. So I hope the percentage changes. Demonstrating good faith takes time and we accept that.

Dick Meyer
Editorial Director
CBSNews.com

Posted by: Dick Meyer at September 18, 2005 12:05 PM | Permalink

Three quick points:

1. Why did Kerry get a pass on "misremembering" Christmas in Cambodia? Because if there's anything reporters learn in years of probing memories, it's how inaccurate chronological testimony can be even from the best sources. My recollection is that the one member of the Air National Guard who remembered seeing Bush in Alabama placed him there on at least one occasion when he couldn't have been there. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he got a pass from the media, too. Memory plays funny tricks on people.

2. With respect to Kerry and the Swift Boat vets, evidence abounds that the media are reluctant to take on decorated war veterans of any political stripe. People who devote themselves to exposing fake war heroes find their stories a tough sell. When, as in Kerry's case, the veteran has actual medals and documents to back his case, the sell is much, much tougher.

3. Of all the amazing things I've read about the media bias wars, Fen's contribution may be the most amazing of all. Of the "hundreds of examples" of media lies and corruption he tells us he could have cited, he selects only one: He feels that he was insufficiently informed about how Max Cleland actually got those limbs blown off. How that detail makes the slightest scintilla of difference to a single human being anywhere in the world he is, of course, unable to tell us.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 18, 2005 1:00 PM | Permalink

Could we not re-fight the Swift Vets case, please? I mean if there ever was a pointless argument where no one will learn a thing or change a whit, that's it.

Thanks, Dick, for dropping in and for these comments. I think Public Eye is a good idea, and CBS deserves a lot of credit for doing it.

About the "party line." Why did I say that?

I don't know what went on your deliberations and I have no reason to doubt your account of events in how Public Eye came to be. But I do know that CBS said Dan Rather's retirement from the anchor's chair had nothing to do the Sixty Minutes story. That was the party line, and I'm entitled to disbelieve it. (Do you think there was a journalist in America, or even at CBS, who believed it?) You say in your pre-history that Public Eye evolved from the re-thinking at CBS News following Dan Rather's retirement. Right there is a connection between the two events, obscured by the party line. But it is a slight connection.

Far more meaningful is the obvious fact that, if the same events unfolded today, the same cluelessness about what was happening to your story on the Net would not be nearly as likely, because if Public Eye works as envisioned the bunker would be pierced. Instead of writing off the entire online vetting drama as the work of CBS enemies, as CBS did, intelligent people like Vaughn Ververs and Brian Montopoli and yourself could provide some sanity, and let higher-ups know what the Internet is really saying.

As for the ducks story, you think I was too harsh? Okay fine. I thought the CBS producer could have made an effort to explain why the audience needs to be uplifted. That would have been interesting. That would have been what Public Eye is about. But she ducked it.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 18, 2005 1:52 PM | Permalink

To Dick Meyer:

I, for one, am greatly appreciative of your new effort, and have said so over at the Public Eye.

As you absorb the slings and arrows, many of them I'm sure unfair and/or petty, I wonder if you have a newfound appreciation for what it must be like for President Bush to stride into the White House East Room for a press conference? What must it be like to put himself out there, fielding "gotcha" questions from the Pack, when he starts every morning with a daily threat briefing? While you and I are casually sipping our coffee, he is dealing with people who would like nothing more than to kill our children. You may think he is doing this well or poorly, but that is what he is doing. Meanwhile, what are the White House press doing?

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 18, 2005 2:01 PM | Permalink

I'm with JennyD---this topic has been done to death.

It is also my understanding that the reason the panel was reluctant to call the documents "fake" is because it is felony to forge federal documents, and that would have triggered a criminal investigation, which no one (well, almost no one) wanted.

Jay says: "Of course, many things I think mysterious and hard to explain are to others easily explained." Here's what I think is "mysterious and hard to explain": For whatever reason, attempting to bring down another Republican President, to help the Democrats win an election, the "heat of battle" as Crisp describes, whatever, I would have thought that CBS would have moved heaven and earth to find out who forged the documents. CBS always seemed curiously uncurious about who provided the "documents" to the well-known nutbag Bill Burkett. These "documents" brought down Dan Rather (more or less), gave CBS a major hit on it's credibility and stockholder confidence, yet no one seemed interested in who "Lucy Rameriz" was or who gave Burkett the documents.

Is the "protect your source at any cost" cult so strong in journo-world that CBS would suffer the consequenses of fecklessness rather than go after that story? What other explanation exists? This has me truly mystified. Answers, please (if available or existing).

My personal theory is that some DNC/Kerry Campaign operative provided the documents to CBS. I don't have proof, so don't ask!

Posted by: kilgore trout at September 18, 2005 2:17 PM | Permalink

3. Of the "hundreds of examples" of media lies and corruption he tells us he could have cited, he selects only one:

I selected Max Cleland because its an example of the more devious and subtle distortions the MSM uses. I could list the more blatant examples, but they are so obvious as to bore even those who would nod in agreement.

He feels that he was insufficiently informed about how Max Cleland actually got those limbs blown off. How that detail makes the slightest scintilla of difference to a single human being anywhere in the world he is, of course, unable to tell us.

I thought I did, but let me restate it: Arguments against Cleland's positions were met with "how dare you question a man who sacrificed 3 limbs for his country!". The media deliberately distorted his war record and elevated him to a postion of sainthood, to intimidate any that opposed him - they were portrayed as heartless and cruel. It was a cheap and unethical trick to limit honest debate from the right. This happens all the time [Sheehan] and goes unnoticed by most. "War hero who left 3 limbs on the battlefield" is much different than "accidentally blew himself up". The MSM made a concious decision to evoke the former, because they knew it would shield him from honest criticism.

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 2:37 PM | Permalink

I should add that if the press is not mature enough to uncover who provided the false documents to CBS, it not mature enough to have a federal shield law. You can't have it both ways---if the press won't out those who lied, we have no reason to believe the press when they quote "unnamed sources." Make up your minds. Show us the truth or be relegated to obscurity. You decide.

Posted by: kilgore trout at September 18, 2005 4:16 PM | Permalink

/revise & extend

David: He feels that he was insufficiently informed about how Max Cleland

Its not that I was "insufficiently informed" by the MSM, its that I was deliberately misled - for propaganda purposes that aided the Kerry campaign. Cleland the "war hero" on the campaign trail lent Kerry credibility as a potential CINC. I seem to recall Malkin or Coulter falling into this trap on Hardball - Chris repeated the MSM distortion of Cleland's war record in a false appeal to authority & sympathy, and translate that heroism to Kerry via Cleland's support. Malkin/Coulter correct the record, Mathews distorts her comments and she spends the next 5 minutes protesting that she never said his wounds were "self-inflicted." Criticism gagged & deflected.

Flip it around: if Cleland was a Republican and had come out in support of Bush. The MSM attack almost writes itself:

[Bob]: Tom, bring us up to date on the campaign trail. We're hearing reports that some think Cleland is a bad choice as a Bush spokesperson.

[Tom]: Thats right Bob. There's a growing perception in political cirlces that Cleland, in presenting his creditionals as a war hero, has allowed his war record to be distorted and -

[Bob]: Now hold on there. We know his wounds were accidental, he blew himself up, but Cleland himself has never -

[Tom]: Yes Bob, while Cleland has never lied about it himself, he has allowed others to exagerate in his presence before the media without correcting them.

[Bob]: Isn't that the same thing?

[Tom]: Maybe so Bob. But what's more interesting is - and I don't mean to be cruel - what's more interesting is the question raised in some political circles as to whether this creates an unfavorable metaphor for the Bush team.

[Bob]: How do you mean?

[Tom]: As you well know, Bush has a history of gaffes and mistakes on the campaign trail - and having a spokesperon who mishandles grenades might remind the public of Bush's clumsy and seemingly incompetent remarks re foriegn policy.

...you get the drift. If Cleland is on the Bush team, the MSM would attempt to attach Cleland's misadventures to Bush, reinforcing a message to the public that Bush can't be trusted to even handle grenades, much less the POTUS nuclear football. Cleland himself is marginalized, become a joke on Letterman and SNL skits, and is rendered ineffective as a spokesperson on the campaign trail.

If Cleland is on the Kerry team, the MSM paints him as a war hero beyond reproach. He is effectively out-of-bounds for those who would counter his message. Cleland gets a free pass to say whatever he wants, and any who would scrutinize his words are demonized for "picking on a cripple who lost 3 limbs on the battlefield in Nam" [with the hanging assumption that it was in battle with the enemy].

So yes, David, it matters b/c it shows just how much influence the MSM has when setting the table for public discourse. They take sides in ways that doesn't show up on the public's radar. And they do it deliberately.

Posted by: Fen at September 18, 2005 4:48 PM | Permalink

This is excruciating. Please stop. If you give me your address, I will e-mail you an official certificate of comment thread victory in the matter of corpse Kerry. That would be victory over David Crisp, myself, Dick Meyer, Steve Lovelady, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Keller, Walter Lippmann-- anyone. Fen wins, it will say in gorgeous gold letters. Just stop. We get it. That means you, too, David.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 18, 2005 7:10 PM | Permalink

Jay, I just want a certificate saying you were wrong about the ducks.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 18, 2005 7:30 PM | Permalink

Sure, David. You get the W on that one. Do you want the gold embossed letters, which rise above the surface of the paper, or do you prefer imprint style, in which the letters sink into the page?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 18, 2005 7:37 PM | Permalink

Jay --

Any thoughts on my conjectures from last night?

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 18, 2005 8:44 PM | Permalink

Jay, Gold-embossed, please, in old German script.

By the way, several commenters have accused Thornburgh-Bocardi of wimping out by failing to conclude that the documents were forged. But I think they didn't see that as their job: Their job was to determine whether CBS had properly vetted the story and the documents. Once they concluded that hadn't been done, then the question of whether the documents were authentic really didn't matter for their purposes. If you do sloppy work and get lucky and turn out to be right after all, then you're still a bad journalist.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 18, 2005 9:36 PM | Permalink

Sorry, I meant to add that somebody made a good point earlier about CBS' failure to track down the forger. Why hasn't that happened? The list of suspects shouldn't be all that long, and if it had been my reputation that got trashed, digging out the culprit would have been my sole priority. CBS' failure to do so does make it seem a bit like OJ promising to find his wife's real killer.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 18, 2005 9:44 PM | Permalink

Abandoned Blogging? ... Not Likely!

However, for me, it's not just a question about what CBS has learned about truthtelling because doubts were raised over whether the documents were typed in 1972 and 1973, or signed by Lieutenant Colonel Killian. I also want to know what they learned about truthtelling based on the content of the memos.

Posted by: Sisyphus at September 18, 2005 9:46 PM | Permalink

Silence and inaction are also a kind of party line. Welcome back, Tim.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 18, 2005 9:51 PM | Permalink

It was nice to have CBS comment on this post. But I am concerned by the beginning of the last paragraph

"Well, Public Eye is not just a blog; it is a really new invention, nothing like it exists."

How much different is the Public Eye than the GM blog that Bob Lutz began some time back? How much different is it than any software company's monitored message boards about the bugs in their latest release?

My concern, and I not no data to back it up, is that they are still living in a coccoon. They set up Public Eye is the express purpose of trying to get the public's opinion and comments. But they forget one thing. They forgot to ask the public's experts on such things, (I would classify Jay Rose n and Jeff Jarvis as experts), on the best way comments could be set up.

This is an example of their lack of listening to their audience (customers). Let's all hope that the Public Eye will help CBS, and other media organization, listen and work with their audiences to create a better product.

Posted by: Tim at September 18, 2005 10:03 PM | Permalink

Something about this thread keeps lyrics from a David Bowie song running through my head:

Making love with his ego
Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man
We had to break up the band

The certainty with which some here can read minds and determine, without doubt, exactly what motivates CBS, Dan Rather and the entire journalistic community is stunning. As is the belief that a million blog voices on the Internet won't make the same stumbles over ego, carelessness and stupidity that news types have.

This may be as good a time to remember that none of us - reporters, bloggers and their many critics left, right or indifferent - don't have the keys to Truth. And we're all going to screw up somewhere down the line.

While I'm at it, let me sign up with JennyD and Kilgore in the expression that the undending minutia of CBS and the documents passed boredom several months ago.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 19, 2005 12:27 AM | Permalink

This is excruciating. Please stop. If you give me your address, I will e-mail you an official certificate of comment thread victory in the matter of corpse Kerry

Agggh. Sorry Jay. Apologies for cluttering up your thread. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

Posted by: Fen at September 19, 2005 7:13 AM | Permalink

Thanks, Fen.

What do folks read into this? What does it tell you? Vaughn Ververs, who runs Public Eye as editor, about their initial thinking:

Some readers have expressed frustration about the comments section. First off, for legal reasons, you must go through a quick registration and agree to the rules of engagement. Many other sites require the same thing. Secondly, the length of the comment is limited to 500 characters, or roughly 100 words. We are working to find a way to let folks know when their comments have reached the limit without losing what has already been written. And the time limit to weigh in on a given entry is 24-hours.

These parameters were set for a reason. First, we want to facilitate a discussion, not a series of dissertations. Second, we want the discussion to be on point, not devolve into a chat room to discuss the latest Brad Pitt romance. These limits might be changed in the future or they may remain the same and we remain open to your thoughts about this.

I like the last part a lot. "We may change this... We remain open to..." In my opinion, the number one factor spelling success or doom in these things is the open and experimental attitude one must have on the Web-- a listening skill, the predicate to invention. (Lex Alexander; if you're reading this, chime in.) They backed off the 500 character thing, and they are re-thinking the 24 hours, I believe.

I've talked about it before. What people fear the Internet is tells you something.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 19, 2005 11:17 AM | Permalink

I think it's fascinating that they were certain their commentators had nothing to say that was valuable enough to take up more than 500 words. Also, they assume the arguments would be so simplistic that they wouldn't need more than 500 words. And the 24 hours -- that's just ridiculous. If I'm away from my office for a day, then I can't have a comment? Gee, that's a great way to get people involved.

They fear us. Those folks at CBS fear what we might say. They see our actions in the ratings, as the total network viewership slides. But those are big huge numbers and they can erode for a while yet before it really hits the fan.

But us, the great unwashed us, with our gaudy and strident opinions, who might not need to be uplifted by ducks. What about us? Clearly, there is wariness.

I think Ververs wants to listen. I think Dick Meyers is watching the Public Eye with a kind of profit and loss view (Man, if this thing doesn't start to crank out some decent comments, let's dump it and get a new camera....).

This is such a great opportunity for them, I can't begin to say. I've been a journalist, and I know uyou have limited time to get pictures, story. You chop that up into a produceable feature, televised or printed. But hundreds of people don't get interviewed, or photographed who could have been, so every news story is actually an observation of the world through a gunslit--a tiny slice of all the things that were happening in and around the event, story of the moment.

The weblog allows for extension, addition, correction, alteration, and debate about the gunslit-sized view that CBS (and all media) put out. It will enhance, even if people disagree.

Why do they fear that? I don't know.

Posted by: JennyD at September 19, 2005 12:50 PM | Permalink

Whew. I can't believe I read the whole thing.

" I know there is no such thing as "the blog community", but thre is a level of smugness, self-importance, sanctimony and intolerance-disguised as openness that confuses me. "

Actually, if you know there's no such thing as 'the blog community' then you're a step ahead of most bloggers, who define it as "the little corner I know of". You're absolutely right about the tone, though.

On comments--I don't think the Public Eye should allow comments at all. If they want to encourage feedback, they should consider forums or other discussion mechanisms.

Someone mentioned earlier that Public Eye should listen to "experts" like Jay or Jeff Jarvis on comments. With all respect to Jay (who I read and enjoy), he's not an expert at managing online discourse. While his blog is influential, I don't see any evidence that his blog is high traffic. I can't find his blog anywhere in the top 200 at Truth Laid Bear (for traffic), and for a *blog* owner to be considered an expert on online discourse, he'd have to be at the dailykos level or close. No blogger short of Kos has the traffic to warrant the designation of expert. Little Green Footballs, maybe. So unless I missed Pressthink up there in the top 10 or 20 traffic blogs, he's not anywhere near the level of activity to rank as an expert.

The reason he has a relatively good comments section is because he's got a small posting community of high quality, low-conflict readers. Don't confuse audience with management.

The Public Eye will have a huge readership and, if they allow comments, will attract lots of nutjobs--the above conversation to an order of 500. Jay's relatively simple task of maintaining order here does not qualify him to advise TPE on its eventual problems of doing same. Size does matter.

There's a reason why most messsage boards are closed, and a reason why almost every high traffic blogger closes comments (dailyKos is more of a discussion board).

Posted by: Cal at September 19, 2005 2:57 PM | Permalink

Out of curiousity, Jenny, why immediately jump to the conclusion that CBS is 'afraid' of us - whoever us happens to be?

Public Eye's hope to control the length of the convesation is certainly naive. Keeping matters on topic and concise is akin to herding cats: fun to watch but ultimately pointless.

But what's wrong with concision? Your journalism training showed you the value - and necessity - of writing tight. It focuses thought and make you get the key points in early.

The 24-hour limit is just silly. Ain't gonna happen. But polling the world isn't really the point of all this, is it? Over time, sure, you get a longer view of the world. Or you get the same endless arguments on bias and the perfidy of Dan Rather over and over again. I don't think anyone has found a way to stop that.

But afraid? It's more than a little bit of hyperbole. If they're afraid of public input, why would they even try?

By the way, your post came in at just a little over 400 words. Did you feel you'd left much out?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 19, 2005 3:23 PM | Permalink

Actually, folks, the limit isn't 500 words -- it's 500 characters, which translates to roughly 80 to 100 words. Or about ten sentences.
Heck, already in this comment I'm up to 66 words -- two-thirds of my alloted length at Public Eye.
This may turn into the biggest public exercise in writing tight since the invention of the original telegraph. (Not that''s there's anything wrong with that ...)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 19, 2005 3:54 PM | Permalink

You don't have to have high traffic to be an "expert" on blogs. I happened to mention Jay and Jeff as they seem to have the best view, and the best discussion, on how the various types of how news organizations and the various types of media are working together.

I made the comment in response to a common corporate practice of the "not invented here" syndrome. I happened to notice that CBS thinks that they are coming up with something so unique that they don't even know what to call it yet.

I am only pointing out that there are models out in the marketplace to look at. And people who are more knowledgable and have more experience than they are about the new environment they want to dip their toe into. It became apparent, at the first glance, they were not willing to put themselves out and allow the breath and recording of comments that this new media demands.

Simple discussions with the "experts" on this board would have pointed that out.

However, I am not discouraged by this attempt. Their heart seems to be in the correct place and they are learning from their experience.

Posted by: Tim at September 19, 2005 4:01 PM | Permalink

500 CHARACTERS? Oh, that's silly beyond words. They're not afraid; they're clueless. (83 characters)

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 19, 2005 4:01 PM | Permalink

I agree with everything you said, Cal. I wouldn't think my comment section necessarily had any lessons for CBS, and I am definitely no expert in managing online discourse. I'd think CBS would have consulted the experiences at places like Yahoo and people there who may have managed forums. But ask yourself: in this day and age, if you are reasonably committed to best practices, how could you debut a blog without RSS?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 19, 2005 6:06 PM | Permalink

That's exactly why I was so angry with CBS for screwing up the proof, raging at those who pointed it out, and letting Rather bigfoot everyone.

Screwing up the "proof"? What "proof"?

You make a better door than you do a window, Jay.

Posted by: stan at September 19, 2005 6:14 PM | Permalink

One way of screwing up the proof is thinking you have proof when you don't. I'm not going to debate you on whether George Bush unfairly eluded some of his duties when he was in the TANG and benefitted from his connections with wealthy and influential people in Texas.

I believe he did, and he hasn't been forthcoming on it. But so what? Everyone has an opinion on that. My sense is that those who say the CBS story, even if shown to be true--with documents that checked out--wouldn't have changed voter opinion in 2004 in any significant way are probably right, although we can never say we know this. Nor do we know what those revelations might mean to voters in the future.

In any event, it's not what we are examining here-- the launch of Public Eye, learning from the Sixty Minutes debacle, what CBS is up to and why it might or might not work.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 19, 2005 6:42 PM | Permalink

And the 24 hours -- that's just ridiculous. If I'm away from my office for a day, then I can't have a comment? Gee, that's a great way to get people involved.

I don't have a problem with a 24 hour limit on comments on a blog being run by an organization as large as CBS. It takes an extraordinarily massive ego to think that one could come up with something original and worth reading in reaction to a specific blog posting that no one else had said in a 24 hour period. CBS's intent is not to provoke "discussion" among those who read the blog, its to get feedback---and 24 hours is more than enough time to accomplish that. If individuals really think that what they have to say is vital, they can always write a letter (or email).

500 characters, of course, is ridiculous.

Posted by: ami at September 19, 2005 6:50 PM | Permalink

They say they've changed the 24 hrs into 72.

500 char isn't such a limit -- just do another comment. I have. But it does disrupt flow/ windbagness. Prolly some limit is good.

Comments still in the lousy newest on top (reverse?) order.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 19, 2005 8:57 PM | Permalink

500 characters is enough to cryptically reference a story, reference reality and tell CBS "BUS TID AGAIN.
There is no percentage in explaining to them why they're wrong. They are trying to figure out how often they get caught.

To explain that there is a huge portion of scientists who think antrhopogenic global warming is hooey (and why they think so) is a waste of time. CBS knows it. They just want to know how many of their readers know it.

In other words, pointing out their errors in an effort better inform CBS is not what we'll be doing.

"yrs. of 9-22, 6:44pm EST, Iraq, wrong"

That's all you need. And I figure, counting spaces, about 39 characters.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 19, 2005 9:18 PM | Permalink

Steve: "let's do a hypothetical here: If a person observes that five of the top eight FEMA officials had no experience in either emergency management or disaster response, but were instead political hacks and cronies deposited on the federal payroll -- your tax dollars at work, by the way -- then, that makes that person a "Bush-hater" ? Or maybe -- just maybe -- that makes that person "one pissed-off taxpayer" ??"

I do NOT care, much, about how many hacks at FEMA, unless they FAIL to do their job. Brown did a pretty good as "waiter" -- waiting for orders from the Governor. When Gov. Haley, in Miss. (worse hit), asked for specific stuff, he got good FEMA response.

Brown, and FEMA, failed to pick up the slack when Dem Mayor of N.O. failed to do his job, AND when Dem Gov. of LA failed to do her job. And all three of them, on Mon. night after Katrina had passed, seemed relieved and NOT talking about the risk of the levees breaking. (See Malkin's transcript of the press meeting).

Austin Bay has a good post about the duty of FEMA -- to provide the specific support the locals ask for. Within some 72-96 hour timeframe. FEMA did better on Katrina than in many other big hurricanes. Whether because of political hacks or despite that.

FEMA was never set up to recover from mismanaged local authority.

Charles says about my post, without quoting me, "In other words, if you hold an opinion contrary to what the Republican Party Line is (today), it can only be because one is consumed by irrational hate."

This is the usual Leftist misquote/twist into a strawman, and then attack the strawman. Jonathan Chait admitted, a year ago, that he hated Bush, and why he hated Bush. So I wrote up Bush hate, Jew hate, Success hate.

Leftists seem full of these hates.
I hate the bias I see, often in ommission, in the Lamestream media.
I hate the fact that the Leftist policy of "US OUT NOW" was followed in Vietnam, and the result of Leftist policy was genocide.

I now think the MSM bias against Bush helps keep Bush in the "underdog" position, being "unjustly" persecuted by the MSM attack dogs. Since nobody can fire the MSM, the only thing to do is vote Rep (against MSM bias).

And stop watching MSM -- meaning advertisers pay less, the CBS brand is less valuable, so NOW there's a reason (from ON HIGH) to "do something" to stop the downward trend. Public Eye will not be the first MSM blog.

Will it push CBS to hire a pro-Iraq Liberation, pro-tax cuts, pro-life powerful ( pro-Bush) editor? Prolly not yet. But possibly.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 19, 2005 9:19 PM | Permalink

I now think the MSM bias against Bush helps keep Bush in the "underdog" position, being "unjustly" persecuted by the MSM attack dogs.

Its worse than that. The constant harping and petty attacks have immunized Bush against legitimate complaints. CBS could provide hard proof tomorrow that Bush was [insert evil plot here] and half the country would roll their eyes upwards.

The running joke these days goes: "so, who do you think the media will run against the Republcans in 08?" That says much about perception of the MSM - they have become part of the process, not mere observers, and so they will come under attack.

From what I've read here, the CBS blog appears to be nothing more than damage control. 500 characters may just be enough for the "me too" crowd, but won't invite the quality feedback needed to create change at CBS. I'll be curious to see how they handle the criticism - truth spoken to power - that they so lavishly heap upon others. Although I guess 500 will teach me to be more concise ;)

But, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want reformation of the MSM. They handicap the Dems and make them weaker - no philosophy tested in crucible; no vetting of candidates before OpFor attacks; encouragement of moonbats that drive away moderates; platforms provided for race-baiters who are transparent to the swing vote, etc.

As an American, and former liberal, I know its not good for the country - we need strong opposition parties to fill in the gaps, to make us strong where the majority is weak. But until I see a pattern of evidence that the MSM is acting in good faith, I won't extend any benefit of doubt. They've likely lost me forever as a consumer. They're better off firing half their producers, aggressively implementing an AA program [conservative thinkers like Powerline] and targeting the newest generation.

Posted by: Fen at September 19, 2005 10:39 PM | Permalink

"Will it push CBS to hire a pro-Iraq Liberation, pro-tax cuts, pro-life powerful ( pro-Bush) editor?" --Tom Grey

Let's hope not. The day that CBS, or any news outlet, starts hiring editors based on their politics is the day that news becomes spin.
As an editor, I've hired a lot of folks in my time -- probably more than 100 over the course of 30 years. I've never asked one of them as to his/her political inclinations. (I'm not even sure that doing so is legal.) I didn't give a shit who they voted for. All I wanted to know is if that person could get off his ass and come back with the story.
As for the "duty" of FEMA -- Nick Lemann has an instructive piece in the current New Yorker (p 67) on the history of decisive federal intervention in this country, without local invitation, to enforce the law or to secure the rights of the disenfranchised. (Think Eisenhower; think Kennedy.)
And Leonard Pitts had a wonderful piece in the Miami Herald on how FEMA showed up at his doorstep with water, food and medical supplies within 24 hours after Hurricane Andrew blew half his house away in 1992.
So much for the 72-to-96-hours trope.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 19, 2005 10:47 PM | Permalink

Steve: The day that CBS, or any news outlet, starts hiring editors based on their politics is the day that news becomes spin.

Ironic, as CBS couldn't pass an "effects test" that Kennedy & Roberts argued last week. The MSM is out of touch with conservatives because "no one [they] know voted for President [Bush]. Its a blind spot they keep getting ambushed from, a situation of "shared values" that limits the crop of workers they select from. Until they start agressively addressing that weakness with some kind of conservative AA program, they will continue to be out of touch with half of America.

Posted by: Fen at September 19, 2005 11:15 PM | Permalink

Steve. Ref Pitts:

You must be a journalist. Everybody else knows Jason van Steenwyk blew the guy away.

It was five days to a week for most folks in the area.

As everybody but journalists know.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 19, 2005 11:47 PM | Permalink

That's funny. I work in the MSM and I know a number of people who voted for Bush. I'm pretty sure the publisher, a majority of the board of directors, more than half the editorial board and a goodly number of editors.

I say guess because who we vote for and the color of our politics never comes up.

This absolutism that Fen, among many, is hilarious when you consider that my newspaper - as well as a significant number of newspapers across the country - endorsed Bush.

It might be instructive to remember that the media are plural. Though with consolidization through mergers, that plurality is shrinking fast.

Apparently the only affirmative actionn program some conservatives believe in is one for conservatives in the media. They're there, guys.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 20, 2005 12:01 AM | Permalink

Go hate the media somewhere else, please. You really should. You're not doing any good here, joylessly repeating the same thing post after post after post. What could you possibly get out of driving your nail into that wall, prying it out and driving it in again, over and over? MSM is biased, MSM is hostile to conservatives, MSM hates Bush, MSM is cluelessly liberal. Whom are you even talking to? Do you imagine there is someone somewhere within reach of this weblog who doesn't know you feel this way?

There is no inquiry, there is no discovery, there is no expression, there is no wonder, no learning, no information, no exchange, nothing new, nothing that moves, grows, builds, shifts... nothing. (No beauty in language, either.) There's not even a question on the table. Just the desert of assertion-- the same assertion, mile after vacant mile.

Really, what is the point of this drilling? What punch through are you hoping for? What result? Are you looking for some kind of confessional from big media? At some fancy J-professor's blog? Is that the crazed fantasy you come here with?

I don't get it, but I'm asking you, just as one clueless human being to another: The Web is a really big place: go hate the media for being biased somewhere else.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 20, 2005 12:19 AM | Permalink

Yes, but that changed after Andrew.

In the four hurricanes that hit Flordia in 2004 - Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, FEMA began strategically locating assets in the state before the first storm made landfall, according to press accounts.

For Frances alone, the White House's own account,FEMA moved by noon the day after the storm hit, with 100 trucks of water, 280 trucks of ice to Jacksonville. MREs were already on-site and available. Disaster Medical Assistance Teams were on the ground and Urban Search and Rescue Teams were already working with state officials.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 20, 2005 12:24 AM | Permalink

Jay--
Have you seen "Pallywood" yet? I posed a related question at the Public Eye for the forthcoming Q&A with 60 Minutes producer (and international specialist) Rome Hartman. More also on my blog.

How do you think they will respond?

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 20, 2005 1:02 AM | Permalink

The claim has been made that the content of the fake memos is what counts because they are consistent with what we know about Bush's ANG service.

My question is, how do we know this? Are there in existence any actual, (verified as authentic) memos or credible eyewitness accounts that list Bush as a slacker and a duty-shirker who nevertheless got preferential treatment because of his family connections?

Posted by: OregonMuse at September 20, 2005 1:32 AM | Permalink

Oregon. If there were, there'd have been no need for the fake docs.

What we do have is Bush accumulating more points than necessary to complete his term. It would be necessary to demonstrate that the people in charge of crediting drill hours and training and so forth for point purposes gave him points he hadn't earned. I hasten to say that it would have to be egregious, since the Reserve of the time was pretty sloppy and there would probably be overs and unders for practically anybody.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 7:37 AM | Permalink

Are there in existence any actual, (verified as authentic) memos or credible eyewitness accounts that list Bush as a slacker and a duty-shirker who nevertheless got preferential treatment because of his family connections?

yes. the problem is that, at the documents were released by the White House, no one knew how to interpret those documents, and the data contained therein.

The Boston Globe made a stab at it in 2000, but wound up with a "he said/she said" results. In 2004, the Globe did a better job, and outlets like the LA Times and US News and World Reports have also pieces that examine the "official" record within its proper context, and drawn the conclusion that Bush was "a slacker and duty shirker who nevertheless got preferential treatment."

There is even a "smoking gun". After the Air Force examined Bush's records, it decided that he was no longer eligible to accrue time served toward his six year military service obligation.

http://www.glcq.com/docs/points_1974_summary.pdf

What is most remarkable about this document is that it retroactively denied Bush credit for time served. The effective date is September 15, 1973, which is 15 days before Bush was discharged from TXANG to the Obligated Reserve Section (ORS) of the Air Force Reserves. The Air Force bureaucracy (either as a result of the "not observed" Officer Effectiveness/Training Report, or as part of the record review that anyone who is transferred from the Air National Guard to ORS, or both) looked at Bush's records, and realized that he had, for all intents and purposes, "deserted".

Posted by: ami at September 20, 2005 9:39 AM | Permalink

Jay,

You made my point much better than I did. CBS is still learning about this environment. Let's all give them credit for trying. Is it for show? Is it for real? Or is it for survival? I don't much care. The results will speak for themselves.

I looks like they are really interested in participating in the conversation. If they are successful, great.

I agree that hate for the media is getting old. Either fix it, kill it or ignore it.

Posted by: Tim at September 20, 2005 9:51 AM | Permalink

It would be necessary to demonstrate that the people in charge of crediting drill hours and training and so forth for point purposes gave him points he hadn't earned.

That has been demonstrated as well. The Air Force made it clear that if Bush wasn't going to be flying, he should not be getting points and pay credited toward training as a pilot. Its also abundantly clear that Bush never recieved the required advance permission that would result in Bush being credited with points for the time he (supposedly) was "training" in Alabama. (Such advance permission would have resulted in a form being sent back to Texas within 48 hours of the training being done---but Bush was not credited with the training he supposedly did in November for more than seven weeks.) Additionally, there were time limits for substitute training for mandatory scheduled monthly training weekends. (15 days before or 30 days after the scheduled training weekend). But Bush was frequently credited with training that fell well outside those parameters (up to 66 days before the scheduled training weekend).

Posted by: ami at September 20, 2005 9:55 AM | Permalink

ami.
Though happier as a grunt, I did spend a year as an adjutant in an Air Defense group about that time.
There are three issues that caught my eye. The AF said he shouldn't get points for flying when he wasn't flying. Fine. Did he get the points anyway?
Regarding the Alabama training: Did the delay in getting the required form back to Texas indicate anything other than that there was a delay? In other words, delayed notification of training completed is not the same as indicating the training was not completed.
And even on active duty, we could get exceptions for everything. We got waivers on small arms qualification because the civilians near the range complained about the noise. So training falling outside the parameters means he got an exception. This may be preferential treatment, but you'd have to show nobody else getting it. That he did the training outside the parameters shows he did the training.

It appears that this is not sufficient to make a case for anything other than a guy getting through the Reserves as if he didn't plan on a career with them. I have a friend--we go back to jump school--who finished his career as a full colonel. You could do a lot in and for the reserves and still have a pretty flexible schedule with them.

This brings up another point: While all this was going on, nobody--no body--no journo challenged Kerry to release his records. Double standards, by all appearances.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 10:30 AM | Permalink

Richard --
Yeah, I read Jason van Steenwyk's attempt to tell Leonard Pitts that what happened to Leonard Pitts didn't happen to Leonard Pitts.
It's not very convincing. But then that's always a hard case to make -- "I know more about what happened to you than you know about what happened to you."
It was a nice try, though.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 20, 2005 11:50 AM | Permalink

(apologies to Jay)

AF said he shouldn't get points for flying when he wasn't flying. Fine. Did he get the points anyway?

Bush wasn't credited with "flying", he was credited with training as an F102 pilot, when he wasn't accomplishing any of the training mandated for F102 pilots. The State of Texas was paid by the US government to maintain the readiness of 111th FIS --- which meant that all of the officers it had assigned to pilot spots actually were training as pilots. (The Air Force said that if he wasn't going to be training as a pilot, he should have been reassigned (given another job). ) You didn't get points for "attendance", the points you got were for accomplishing the "training" regimem mandated by the Air Force.

Regarding the Alabama training: Did the delay in getting the required form back to Texas indicate anything other than that there was a delay? In other words, delayed notification of training completed is not the same as indicating the training was not completed.

There was no reason for the delay, if the training was properly authorized. Basically, there was a Form 40A that had to be filled out before Bush showed up in Alabama by the Alabama unit which would have been given to the officer supervising Bush's training by the company clerk of the training unit. All the supervising officer had to do was sign Bush in and out, and hand it in to company clerk, who would put it in the mail within 48 hours. And since Bush's own unit had to authorize the creation of the Form 40A by the training unit, they would have been expecting one back within days of the authorized training.

(That is just the "documentary" evidence. The anecdotal evidence, specifically the recollections of people at the Alabama unit who would have been involved in authorizing and processing Bush's training, make it pretty obvious that even if Bush had shown up in Alabama on the dates specified in the payroll reports, it was not authorized per Air Force requirements.)

And even on active duty, we could get exceptions for everything. We got waivers on small arms qualification because the civilians near the range complained about the noise. So training falling outside the parameters means he got an exception. This may be preferential treatment, but you'd have to show nobody else getting it. That he did the training outside the parameters shows he did the training.

there is absolutely no evidence that suggest that Bush received an official "exception" to the training regimen required of pilots. Because those requirements were established by the Air Force, "waivers" would have to be authorized (or "indorsed") at some point by the Air Force itself. But the evidence in the documents makes it clear that no such waiver was ever provided by Bush --- the Air Force made it clear that as long as Bush was designated as an F102 pilot, he was expected to train as an F102 pilot.

Mr. Aubrey, the document SAY that Bush received pay and points to which he was not entitled. The documentary evidence shows that the Air Force agreed that Bush failed to fulfill his training requirements --- so your argument consists of NOTHING more than conjecture that is directly contradicted by the documentary evidence itself.

Furthermore, you attempt to frame the issue in terms of Bush (and Bush alone) recieving "special treatment" is a red herring. (Its like saying that we should have no problem with Kojo Annan taking payoffs from Iraq in the Oil for Food scandal because lots of people were getting paid off. ( Bush's requirements were established in Federal statutes and regulations, and US Air Force policies and procedures. It doesn't matter in the slightest the degree to which Texas Air National Guard officers failed to enforce those requirements for others. The only issue is whether Bush fulfilled what was required of HIM by US Law and Air Force policy derived from that law.

Posted by: ami at September 20, 2005 11:58 AM | Permalink

Anyone who is in Boston, on Wednesday evening you can see PressThink, represented by yours truly, discussing problems new and old with Dan Kennedy, formerly media critic of the Phoenix. It's 6:30 at Northeastern University. Details at Dan's blog, Media Nation. I'm going to be meeting with a group of graduate students there, also.

Anyone in Washington, DC, Thursday of this week I am going to be on a program with Robert Cox and others at the National Archives:

Thursday, September 22 at 7 p.m. in the National Archives William G. McGowan Theater

In honor of Constitution Day, the Newseum and the National Archives will present a program examining how technological advances are reshaping interpretation of the First Amendment, the amendment that guarantees, among other things, free speech and free press... What's credible? What's not? And, just how far does the First Amendment protect this new wave of journalism?

Frank Bond of the Newseum and former Channel 9 anchor will moderate a discussion with Robert Cox, President of the Media Bloggers Association and Managing Editor of The National Debate; Bruce Sanford, Chairman of the Board, The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia, Deborah Potter, Executive Director of Newslab and former network correspondent for CBS and CNN, and Jay Rosen, Chairman and Professor of Journalism at New York University, as they examine the issues on the line when technology meets traditional journalism.

I would love to see you there; if you do come and you're a steady reader, say hello.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 20, 2005 1:17 PM | Permalink

Having put on my hip boots, I will wade into the Bush TANG/SwiftBoat quagmire and ask ami to explain how this explosive story, which has been covered and investigated ever since GWB was running for TX governor in the 90's, was not on the front page of the Times-Democrat for a full month like Abu Ghraib? If it is the slam-dunk you claim it is, why didn't the national press promote this like they have other anti-Bush stories? If you are correct, and GWB was a deserter, didn't the national press have an obligation to keep the drumbeat going until GWB was defeated? How do you explain this lack of zeal on the part of the national press?

Inquiring minds want to know, ami!

Posted by: kilgore trout at September 20, 2005 1:24 PM | Permalink

I agree with my excellent former professor, Jay Rosen, that the whole "Bashing the MSM for being liberal" thing is tired. I watch the news and i think it's heavily biased IN FAVOR OF BUSH. How's that? I know plenty of people who feel the same way.

People are always going to feel like the media is biased one way or another, because people tend to view the news through the lens of their own beliefs. If an article talks about the national debt growing during Bush's presidency, a conservative will immediately attack it for being a "liberal article." Likewise, if an article talks about the failures of New Orleans's mayor and Louisiana's governor instead of the Bush administration's mistakes, a liberal might view that article as "right-wing propoganda."

Blogs like the Public Eye provide a chance for balance-- not a chance to turn a story into an argument for the left or right. The goal of the Public Eye and blogs like it should be to correct innaccuracies and inform the uninformed. They should make the media accountable for what they publish-- making sure they engage in in depth, accurate reporting. They should not, as is so often the case, to provide an outlet for heavily biased backlash which seeks to belittle some facts and emphasize others in the name of promoting an agenda. I'm no centrist, but I believe the mainstream press should be. What I don't believe is that it should give any venue to extreme views from the right OR the left.

Hopefully the blog will not tell CBS what to report and what not to. Rather, it will make sure what CBS does report is true-- and point out ways the story could have been done better.

It's not a perfect system. For instance, Who holds the blogosphere responsible for accuracy? Can we truly ever have reporting that is "fair" to everybody? But at least the MSM is waking up to the public's growing appetite to be involved in journalism.

Posted by: Adam at September 20, 2005 1:50 PM | Permalink

ami. Wrong. I am not saying that sloppiness and flexibility in reserve accounting and requirements justified Bush's special treatment, if any. I'm saying that sloppiness and flexibility in reserve accounting was the norm. Thus, getting the advantage of said sloppiness is not special treatment.
If everybody else had to stick to both the letter and spirit, and Bush got a bunch of favors, then you have a case.

Steve. You must be a journalist. van Steenwyck didn't tell Pitts anything about what happened to Pitts. He told the rest of us what happened to the rest of the folks there. As a journalist, you think we are allowed to know only what you tell us. Even when I tell you I read the thing, you act as if I had not, and misrepresent it. In fact, there are probably folks here who will go and look at it, which would put you in a bad spot.
You just don't get it.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 1:52 PM | Permalink

Adam. I agree with you, but I don't think it will work.

CBS would not have done some of the egregious things they did if they had put truth ahead of partisan interests.

Thus, truth is secondary.

If I read you right, you believe that CBS can be straightened out if they are apprised of errors they made. Because they don't want to make errors.

I would say that CBS wants to know when they're caught making errors so they'll know which ones they got away with.

You say you don't want to tell them what to report. I do. If they are all over a story that makes republicans look bad, and then it turns out to be bogus, I would like them to report that, too, and as prominently as they did the original, not relegating it to someplace that would be the television equivalent of the newspapers' middle of the M2M personals, which currently seems to be the case.
And I would make rowbacks a flogging offense.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 2:56 PM | Permalink

Kilgore:

How do you explain this lack of zeal on the part of the national press?

1) perhaps you should examine your own assumptions about the anti-Bush zeal of the corporate media...

2) IMHO, it didn't matter to the most of the corporate media how much of a "slam-dunk" the Bush/AWOL story was. With the exception of the Boston Globe, no corporate news organization made any effort prior to the "Killian memos" scandal to seriously examine the contents of Bush's military records. (and after the Killian memos scandal, only the LA Times and US News made the effort to determine what was in the records. The AP also did their own brand of follow-up, filing an FOIA lawsuit for additional materials.) Keep in mind that the whole reason that Bush's military service became an issue was that the right-wing media decided to pillory Wesley Clark because Michael Moore had called Bush a "deserter" in introducing Clark at a rally. Had it not been for that artificial controversy created by the right-wing, "Bush/AWOL" would have been a non-issue.

If everybody else had to stick to both the letter and spirit, and Bush got a bunch of favors, then you have a case.

The simple fact is that the documentary evidence proves that Bush not merely violated both the letter and spirit of the laws of the US and the policies of the Air Force, he did so in an egregious fashion. If you wish to argue that "everyone did it", I would suggest that it is up to you to provide the documentary evidence supporting that assertion, and it is also incumbent upon you to argue that the extraordinary level of fraud and political corruption of the Texas Air National Guard necessary for "everyone" to do it would be acceptable.

Posted by: ami at September 20, 2005 2:56 PM | Permalink

ami, I don't give a rat's @ss what GWB did in the 60's. I don't have to prove squat. You have not answered my question--in your view, why did the national press give GWB a pass (assuming they had access to the information you quote) if they had the goods on him?

I don't care if GWB was AWOL or not, it's too late for that debate, tell me why the national press gave GWB a pass? Don't marginalize yourself with tired bromides like "right-wing media decided". You brand yourself as unserious.

Posted by: kilgore trout at September 20, 2005 3:17 PM | Permalink

Aubrey, you must not be a journalist. You're making your judgment solely on the findings of a highly partisan blogger. And your interpretation of what Jason van Steewyk said is sadly askew.

Van Steewyk didn't blow Pitts away. He simply pointed out that Pitts likely didn't live in the Homestead region, which was the most severely damaged by Hurricane Andrew.

The view that FEMA dropped the ball badly in response to Andrew in August 1992 was widely stated, in and out of Congress. It was the federal agency that would screw up a two-car parade, to quote Norman Minetka. Inefficient, bloated with political appointees and and rule-book bureaucrats, FEMA was a disgrace.

Then Clinton was elected, named James Witt to the job of FEMA director and things changed. Even the Republican opposition credited Witt with making FEMA work. One year after Andrew, the Mississippi River overflowed its banks after weeks of rain and flooded huge portions of nine Mid-western states. FEMA responded promptly and provided the kind of service taxpayers should expect from disaster relief.

Sadly, FEMA has since seen its budget hacked away, personnel not replaced and leadership returned to political hacks. The parallels with FEMA, circa 1992, are painfully close.

Talk all you want that what happened in Louisiana is the fault of state leaders. But disasters the scope of Katrina - or Andrew - are why we have FEMA. Individual states are not capable of dealing with the cost, both human and fiscally, without prompt, efficient federal assistance.

Whenever Mr. Pitts got his water in 1992 doesn't matter. It's all those folks along the Gulf Coast who waited for days neck deep in water who count now.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 20, 2005 3:20 PM | Permalink

Dave. You're almost right.
van Steenwyck showed how Pitts' anecdote didn't prove squat. The plural of anecdote, as has been said, is not data, much as Pitts wished it were.

The unfortunate folks in NO suffered from a combination of factors, the least of which was the activity of FEMA. As you know, the locals are told to take care of their own business for two to three days. NOLA didn't do that. FEMA is a coordinator and is supposed to write checks after the event.
By the end of two to three days, a huge number of federal resources ("It was like flying into a hornet's nest," said one helicopter pilot of the chopper traffic over the city)were deployed. All the choppers that would fit and not run into each other were working.

It is also true that the locals were in charge of the dome and center fiascos. It was the LA officials who refused to let the Red Cross and Salvation Army in. They may have had legitimate security concerns--a colleague just reported a conversation with a client who went into NO recently with some Blackwater guys for security and ended up in a fight which killed six people. Probably a rumor, but perhaps the LA folks had an idea. Nevertheless, it was not FEMA's idea.
It was NOLA's failings that left people standing up to their necks in water. Getting them out was never supposed to be FEMA's job. Various military and civilian helicopters did stupendous work, and whether FEMA was coordinating them or not is hardly the issue.
Resources were forward deployed, as one would hope.
The problem is that hurricanes don't just go poof when they cross the coastline. Katrina was a Cat 2 for at least another day, ruining roads and bridges far inland, delaying anybody's movement.
And, when all is said and done, FEMA's performance is about what it has been in the past.

ami. As I see your argument, you can't figure out how Bush got all his points, given what you have on paper. He got in a fair amount of operational flying, which ordinarily you don't let a guy do who isn't current in the aircraft. Since you can't figure out how it happened, it must be nefarious.
One of my points is, anybody, including Private Jones who guards the parking lot, could get waivers and exceptions. The Reserves were desperate to keep up their numbers with people who were past their initial obligation and they took great care to be accomodating.
One unit I heard about had all its officers get official letters of reprimand because they couldn't keep their numbers up. They decided to make the drills as easy as possible, giving rise to several long-running bridge tournaments, and using the pencil to accomplish what is ordinarily managed by sweat and exertion. I gather you had to show up, but everybody got promoted as fast as regs would allow, with waivers for practically anything that would prevent even Lt. Sonny Fuzz from being promoted early as if he were the next Pershing.
In this atmosphere--and you had to be there to appreciate it--anything could happen. One of my friends told me about a colleague who couldn't account for a generator. So he tore the page out of the Property Book and the CMMI didn't notice.
Bush got his flight hours in, which, multiplying his hours times the likelihood of dying in the F102, put him at approximately the same risk as somebody going to Viet Nam.
Paperwork gaps prove nothing. I should modify that and say that the current regime is probably pretty tightly run. I wouldn't know. Then....F Troop.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 4:25 PM | Permalink

Jay

I think I'd rather go to your Boston discussion because I'm a huge fan of Dan Kennedy. But since I live in DC its far more likely I would go to that one. Maybe I'll come and ask you why CBS hates Bush so much? (Just kidding!)

I've been wanting to join this discussion for a while. I find that I think some of the problems with transperacy and media trust has to do with the idea that US media project themselves as a public good. You know this...you've talked about how this religion (journalists as good-guy crusaders) is taught in J-school.

Of course the problem with ANY institution that asks for such trust (the church, the county Hospital, the school board) is that when people learn that they envitably have feet of clay, everyone gets angry and betrayed.

I would say a good comparision is the local daily newspaper to the local hospital. A hospital is a supposed to be public good. But when they do things that are supposed to be cost-effective...when they try to slag off taking uninsured patients...whenever they do something that might seem a tiny bit greedy and heartless for such a public good, well it *shocks* everyone. "Wait I thought hospitals were there to heal people? Why are they turning away the uninsured?"

So what's the answer? Since that "jouranlism is a public good" feels a lot like marketing I'm not sure there is an answer. As you said...more transperancy that shows *gasp* a newspaper jut like any other business, isn't really going to be good for the newspaper's audience. Well...I guess for J-Schools to tell their students they're not entering a noble professional after all. That's its not any more a public good than being a ditch-digger or a highway construction guy.

Posted by: catrina at September 20, 2005 4:50 PM | Permalink

Bush got his flight hours in, which, multiplying his hours times the likelihood of dying in the F102, put him at approximately the same risk as somebody going to Viet Nam.

Mr. Aubrey, now you are just making stuff up. 1 out of every 150 of the 8.7 million Americans who served in vietnam died as a result of that war.

Between 1968 and 1972 (the only years flew) there was one F102 fatality for every 82,179 hours flown. Bush flew 278 hours in the F102, making his odds of dying in an F102 about 1 in 295. (it should be noted that these "flight hours" include lots of time in an F102 simulator, as well as time training with an experienced pilot in a TF102....so his odds of dying as an F102 pilot were, in fact, lower.)

Posted by: ami at September 20, 2005 5:44 PM | Permalink

FEMA is a coordinator and is supposed to write checks after the event.

Oh, I see the problem. You see FEMA as some big paper factory, generating forms and tidy up afterwards by dispensing money.

That may be the reality, certainly in the Bush years. But FEMA is generally seen as an action agency, one that provides real-time aid as soon as possible after a disaster. Coordinating with the states and local governments to do the things that the locals can't do by themselves. They've had a disaster, you see.

Take the evacuations. According to a Louisiana news report, Gov. Blanco did send in the buses, evacuating some 15,000 people. But she was also promised 500 buses by FEMA's Michael Brown. They never showed up.

FEMA has worked better, as referenced in the information about the Mississippi River flooding in 1993. But sitting around, gathering reports and cutting checks is a recipe for disaster.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 20, 2005 6:19 PM | Permalink

catrina: one way to say it is journalism is a profoundly ambiguous practice that is described by practitioners as public-spirited, which is misleading, and by its detractors as bankrupt, which is also misleading.

One reason I wrote about the ducks is that the CBS producer was unable to acknowledge even the mildest suggestion that audience-soothing was something the CBS Evening News occasionally did. "Certainly not!" was her attitude. Is that wise?

Sure, it's a small, fluff story and no harm was done by it, but my feeling was: if Public Eye can't get a minimal level of candor on a "nothing" story like uplift-with-Ducks, what is it going to get when there are real stakes?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 20, 2005 6:47 PM | Permalink

Good grief, Dave. That article you pointed to may as well be a press release from Gov. Blanco's office. 1250+ words and not a single direct quote from anyone else? Where is the "context" that you journalists are supposed to provide?

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 20, 2005 8:23 PM | Permalink

ami.

The article I read had Bush flying more than three hundred hours. It also had the fatality rate at about one per 70,000.

I'll take your sources as given, for the sake of argument and amend mine to say that flight crews get flight pay even when not in combat--a complaint of the grunts--because they are constantly in combat with gravity, enemy in sight or not. I would amend it further to say that the casualties during the years Bush would have been in Viet Nam, had he gone, would have been considerably less than those of the mid-to-late Sixties which were awful. This may be the point the article I read was making. Casualties during the early Seventies vs. flying the 102.

There are several facts which remain. One is that, if he'd wanted, he never needed to fly. Ground work was safer, which is why if you're not on flight status you don't get flight pay.
The physical requirements for ground work are easier, so his putative good-timing would have been easier to manage.
He took a risk he didn't have to take. Kerry tried to avoid Viet Nam but didn't have the same luck, and there he served honorably, or not, depending on whom you believe.
It would have been easier to tell if Kerry had served honorably if his records had been released, which probably wouldn't have happened even if somebody from the MSM had suggested he do so.
Some of the Swifties' stuff might have been refuted.
Makes you wonder.

As to FEMA, it has about 2500 full-time employees, some of which have to be held back for the next catastrophe, which might not wait for this one to be cleaned up. This means they're not an action agency, since they don't have enough bods to do much.
I'd be interested in finding out why FEMA's five hundred buses didn't show up. Also why Nagin's evacuation plan for NO was sauve qui peut. And whether the feds should be blamed for allowing a couple of morons to be in control, just because the constitution says they should.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 20, 2005 8:47 PM | Permalink

I'm not sure there are any noble professions, but there are people who practice their professions nobly. For journalists, that means following the facts even when they take you places you don't want to go; running stories that may alienate advertisers and hurt the bottom line; writing and reporting with humility and compassion; giving space for free to people who wish to use it to say what a jerk you are; and spending more and working harder than you have to just to make sure the work is done right.

Journalism, properly practiced, is a public good, as are ditch digging and highway construction, and for some of the same reasons. But the fact is, this business is held to a different standard. I don't know how many times I've heard someone complain in response to a sensational or controversial story, "You just want to sell newspapers." When I hear someone complain that "McDonald's just wants to sell hamburgers," then I will agree that this is just another business.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 20, 2005 9:10 PM | Permalink

What could you possibly get out of driving your nail into that wall, prying it out and driving it in again, over and over?

To be sure they [and they do read you] understand we still want our pound of flesh. Rearranging deck chairs and cosmetic changes won't bring us back.

But I'll leave you to your arguments re TANG and fall back into the great unwashed masses. Thanks again for your time Jay.

Posted by: Fen at September 20, 2005 9:34 PM | Permalink

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011734.php

Posted by: Fen at September 20, 2005 9:41 PM | Permalink

"this business is held to a different standard"
David --
I'm not sure whether your comment is meant to be descriptive or normative. Either way, if modern journalism were highway construction, most drivers would be cursing the potholes. I don't know of many MSM journalists who follow the practices you aptly describe as noble.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 20, 2005 9:42 PM | Permalink

Right, Neuro. If the facts are inconvenient, argue context.

It would be risky indeed for Gov. Blanco to make stuff up so publically. If her facts are in error, they can be disputed, right?

Or we can look at photos of swamped busses and harumph about incompetent state politicians. Is that what you mean by context?

Posted by: Dave In Texas at September 20, 2005 9:55 PM | Permalink

You may not know them, Neuro. The principled practices David Crisp mentions are common to decent and hard working journalists (and the are tens of thousands of them) throughout the U.S. If you are not aware of that, then you should educate yourself beyond your personal experience. If you don't believe it, well... good luck figuring out the press.

re: this business is held to a different standard...

I think there's a clear difference between McDonald's, which we can recognize as "only" interested in selling burgers, and, say, the Dallas Morning News, which breaks its contact with us if it's "only" selling papers. The difference is McDonald's doesn't claim to tell us the truth about our communities and our common life.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 20, 2005 10:00 PM | Permalink

Fen--

They will continue to believe that they are getting flak from both sides, and therefore they must be playing it down the middle. Meanwhile, this poll (scroll down) shows that they are indeed alienating half their audience -- Republicans perceive pro-Dem bias at more than twice the rate that Dems perceive pro-Rep bias:

"Generally speaking, do you think the news media are mostly biased in favor of Republicans, mostly biased in favor of Democrats, or does the bias favor each party about the same?"

Media biased in Favor of:(D)(R)(=)DK
ALL Respondents 22 13 36 5
Republicans 53 4 26 2
Independents 14 11 42 7
Democrats 4 24 40 4

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 20, 2005 10:06 PM | Permalink

Dave in TX -- I am arguing neither the facts nor the context. I am not trying to make any points at all about who, if anyone, is "at fault" for Katrina's aftermath. I am saying that an article that quotes only one side in a debate that has consumed the nation for 3 weeks isn't reporting, it's stenography (as Truman Capote didn't say).

Jay -- I don't think it is fair to imply that I am under-educated about the media or that my experience is limited. As I assume is true for all of the commenters here, I have been an avid consumer of news (junkie, in fact) in all forms, since the pre-blogosphere days when I actually subscribed to 3 dead-tree newspapers and 2 weeklies, in addition to watching many hours of cable, network, and local news. And I am thinking not only of the failures/bias of political reporting, but the pathetic state of science journalism, which all of my colleagues (mostly on the left) routinely lament.

I am sure there are many, many well-intentioned practitioners of journalism at all levels, and there are some who are actually good. Until very recently, I even gave most journalists the benefit of the doubt, presuming that many of their shortcomings (except for some of the obviously biased agenda-driven types) were due to limited column-inches and tight deadlines. Then I saw how much better someone like Captain Ed could do, while still working a "day job" and without any J-School education, and I lost my remaining illusions and good will towards the press as a whole.

And I'm not even particularly disdaining any individuals in the media more than other professionals (I can be a bit of a curmudgeon). Most people, including professionals, do not know how to think outside of their own habitual practices. But, as an institution, the media is failing us in a way that I believe is undermining both our national security and our civic discourse, and most individual journalists seem incapable of correcting their practices.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 20, 2005 10:35 PM | Permalink

"You just don't get it." -- Richard Aubrey

No, you just don't get it, Richard.
I suppose it's possible that just one FEMA crew showed up in Miami 24 hours after Hurricane Andrew -- inexplicably 72 hours ahead of their colleagues -- and, magically, that crew landed at Leonard Pitts' house.
But is it likely ?
Pitts is a journalist and a hurricane victim with a first-person story to tell about FEMA's swift response in the days before patronage replaced the agency's professionals with political hacks who couldn't hold a real job in the real world if their live's depended on it.
Van Steenwyck is, by his own account, an avidly partisan blogger dedicated to a point-of-view, factual accounts be damned.
I have no trouble at all figuring out who to believe.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 20, 2005 11:10 PM | Permalink

I don't think anyone considered the Baton Rouge Advocate story the definitive word on preparedness, Neuro-Conservative. That wasn't the point.

It did offer a perspective, even a context, of the issue that was missed, shall we say, in other news accounts and conservative blogs. That the state did act. And did trust FEMA's word.

And Neuro, Capt. Ed - and Atrios, for that matter - aren't journalists. They're opinion writers. There's a difference. Even a guy with a day job can write op-ed, as long as he can link to the major media.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at September 21, 2005 12:07 AM | Permalink

Neuro-conservative, Everywhere I've lived, drivers have cursed the potholes. But that doesn't mean that everybody carrying a shovel is corrupt.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 21, 2005 12:15 AM | Permalink

Jay writes

Go hate the media somewhere else, please. You really should. You're not doing any good here, joylessly repeating the same thing post after post after post. What could you possibly get out of driving your nail into that wall, prying it out and driving it in again, over and over? MSM is biased, MSM is hostile to conservatives, MSM hates Bush, MSM is cluelessly liberal. Whom are you even talking to? Do you imagine there is someone somewhere within reach of this weblog who doesn't know you feel this way?

No, but I also don't imagine there is anyone in the media, knowing these things, that gives a rats ass either. You seem consistently troubled by the cacophony of the complainers yet singularly unmoved by the obdurate refusal to admit to any problem at all on the part of the journalists in the crowd. (Watch them rise con una voce to protest that I am wrong.)

My question to you is, what is the purpose of your comment section? Because, although the conversation in the comment section is stupifyingly repetitive, you seem not to get the fact that there are two sides in this stupifaction and neither side is willing to budge an inch. You simply keep asking one side to shut up and go away.

Why is that I wonder?

Then you write

I think there's a clear difference between McDonald's, which we can recognize as "only" interested in selling burgers, and, say, the Dallas Morning News, which breaks its contact with us if it's "only" selling papers. The difference is McDonald's doesn't claim to tell us the truth about our communities and our common life.

And therein lies the problem, for both businesses really sell trust. McDonalds does quite well at it, certainly better than the media. Perhaps it's because they understand that they can advertise good hamburgers and fries all day and all night, but unless they deliver a good product, their business will suffer.

Journalists, on the other hand, want us to believe they are unbiased purveyors of the truth concerned only with "the public good" (as if they are singularly qualified to know what that is) while feeding us flawed stories with made up "facts", anonymous, unverifiable sources and emotionally loaded rhetoric that pushes a point of view, rushed into publication so they can be "first with the news". The product doesn't live up to the hype (all the news that's fit to print, fair and balanced, a source you can trust!)

Yet the media continues to sit in stunned silence, utterly amazed that their customers keep leaving for other vendors, mindlessly repeating the same mistakes because - well - they simply aren't what their customers are telling them they are.

And you keep complaining that the customers should shut up and go away. Seems odd behavior for a blog that purports to want a dialogue.

Posted by: antimedia at September 21, 2005 12:28 AM | Permalink

Let's put this guy in charge of White House briefings, and meet media outrage with outrage:

"Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? ... You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters." - Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, Louisiana, September 20, 2005.

Male reporter: "General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time..."

Honore: "You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question."

Scott McClellan ought to kick some ass! (or get somebody who can put our dominant media reporters in their place...)

Posted by: Trained Auditor at September 21, 2005 12:32 AM | Permalink

Dave McL -- Capt Ed is primarily an opinion writer but has done tenacious reporting on several hot issues, including the Canadian political scandal last spring and the Swift Boat Vets last fall. He also has live-blogged several large political gatherings in a reportorial mode. And I would certainly give more credence to his synthesis and news analysis than R.W. "Johnny Quagmire" Apple.

David C --

At the risk of driving this metaphor into the ground ;>)
-- of course every city has (real) potholes, and just about everybody curses them -- but if there were an enormous pothole every few feet, and they never got fixed, despite the obvious presence of construction workers milling about, one might start to wonder about corruption or fundamental incompetence in the construction company.
--Heck, screw the metaphor. My point is that there are too many examples, every day, of "potholes" in media at all levels. Jay (and some others here) seems to discount any particular example, and even (at times) the practice of pointing out examples, but at some point it just seems like denial.

Posted by: Neuro-conservative at September 21, 2005 1:20 AM | Permalink

Picture a man backing his car down a driveway. And... pop! he runs right over a child's blow-up duck, the kind you use in a backyard pool. Then he puts the car in drive and rolls the wheels of his SUV over the duck again. Then it's back into reverse for another trip over the flattened, now blackened duck. The neighborhood children look on, glassy-eyed and stupefied, as the man keeps shifting from reverse into drive in order to crush that duck again, and again, and again. "Mom," shouts a kid, "it's the guy with the duck and the truck!"

That is what it's like to read your posts in this forum, mister anti-media. It's like watching the guy run over the bias duck.

I repeat what I said here:

Really, what is the point of this drilling? What punch through are you hoping for? What result? Are you looking for some kind of confessional from big media? At some fancy J-professor's blog? Is that the crazed fantasy you come here with?

I don't get it, but I'm asking you, just as one clueless human being to another: The Web is a really big place: go hate the media for being biased somewhere else.

You, especially.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 21, 2005 1:24 AM | Permalink

Bravo, Neuro-conservative:

"...discount any particular example, and even (at times) the practice of pointing out examples, but at some point it just seems like denial."

Jay, this parable from real-life may help you understand the motivation of some bias warriors...

Posted by: Trained Auditor at September 21, 2005 1:47 AM | Permalink

Jay, I thought you wanted ME, especially, to hate media bias somewhere else; I'm sure I'm among the ones causing you grief.

Hugh Hewitt has the transcript for the Don't Get Stuck on Stupid conference.

I imagine that you might feel that way about me, I'm Stuck on Stupid, and genocide, and media bias as an enabler of genocide. (shift truck into reverse, where's that duck? I don't care if I'm just flattening a flat duck -- there are some who say "it's not flat yet". "It wants to float away.") (Artless and boring, too.)

I want the "noble" media to BE noble. Noble attack dogs, telling people the TRUTH -- about Iraq, and the hard choice between difficult democracy and death squad gov't. About N. Ireland, where Catholic-oriented IRA murderers can walk around and intimidate relatives of their murdered victim (McCartney sisters). About the corrupt UN, its failures, its child-raping peacekeepers, its "no genocide" in Darfur.

If the truth seeking reporters reported more truth in Darfur, more in Iraq, more in N. Ireland (the truth about death squad intimidation in a community), I think more folk would support Bush. More folk would understand that ANY alternative policy has costs.

Jay, so far YOUR blog is the best I've found for discussing the important questions; YOU ask the important questions. You get kudos, and my (unwanted?) eyeball attention plus my duck-flattening repeat comments (I know they're boring, I'm trying to practice humor) -- because I'm convinced the ANSWERS to your questions are related to the perspective I keep bringing up. On the issue YOU, alone in the Web that I've found, have brought up:

What is a Reporters role?

1) "Objective" non-biased "truth", as non-involved as possible (3rd person narrative of First Draft of History)
2) A passionate advocate for change, thru pointing out the truth of reality without that change. Here the outraged reporter becomes part of the story.

These two roles, obviously and inevitably, are in conflict.

(flatten the duck again! Vietnam/ Nixon/ Killing Fields; did media support genocide?)

Finally, to Steve's issue:

"Will it push CBS to hire a pro-Iraq Liberation, pro-tax cuts, pro-life powerful ( pro-Bush) editor?" --Tom Grey

Let's hope not. The day that CBS, or any news outlet, starts hiring editors based on their politics is the day that news becomes spin.

I claim the news NOW is spin; and they need counter-spin, or anti-spin. I doubt, Steve, that you're willing to jettison Affirmative Action for blacks, while I am -- as violating ML King's dream (judge on character).

Captain Ed, Michelle Malkin, the Powerline trio; any and all of these folks as editors at NY-DC-LA papers would likely reduce the spin from the media. The fig-leaf used to defend AA is "diversity", and there is certainly some truth to the idea that in College, a more diverse student body helps all who attend. In competing for limited "spots", I prefer a pure meritocracy.

For news, where broad coverage is an explicit goal, they should choose folks who can write well, first. (Guess I won't be waiting for any calls from MSM!) But on top of that, if there are 5 of 5 editors already against Bush, it would be good to have the 6th editor explicitly in favor of Bush, to check the excesses of unseen spin by the others.

This is certainly on-topic -- Public Eye. PE should, too, get some explicitly pro-CBS, pro-Bush folk to be involved in checking CBS. And improve its ratings.

How many media-haters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Lightbulb? Screw the lightbulb, I want to flatten a duck. Again. And again. ad infinitum.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 21, 2005 6:14 AM | Permalink

Meanwhile, this poll (scroll down) shows that they are indeed alienating half their audience -- Republicans perceive pro-Dem bias at more than twice the rate that Dems perceive pro-Rep bias:

You are confusing "bias" with perceived bias. This is not evidence of bias. For instance, in a recent CNN poll, 6 in 10 black Americans felt that race was a factor in the failed Federal response to Katrina, while only 1 in 8 white Americans felt that race played a role. Does that poll mean that the Bush administration is racist?

Journalism is under attack not because of any ideological bias, but because there is political power in convincing people like yourself that there is a bias. When there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community on issues like global warming, intelligent design, gay rights, etc., it is not "bias" to downplay the countervaling "science" that those with a specific agenda want to promote.

The "bias-warriors" are really complaining because the objective facts are inconsistent with their own perception of what they want the facts to be. Not all opinions are equally valid or grounded in facts.

There is bias in journalism--there is an "authority bias" which results in those in power defining the terms of the debate and the options available, and there is a "corporate" bias -- the need to maintain profits which results in minor stories getting massive coverage (see Natalee Holloway) and important stories given short shrift (see the original lack of significant reporting on the Downing Street memos).

What the bias warriors perceive as "ideological bias" is actually a bias toward reporting the relevant facts, and this faux-ideological bias is far less influential than the "authority" and "corporate" biases which are responsible for shaping news coverage.

Posted by: ami at September 21, 2005 6:42 AM | Permalink

I'm with Jay--the bias duck has been run over. Yeah, we've got it. I know there is bias in media at some level, partly because there is self-selection on the part of people who enter the profession.

Journalists are, like teachers and social workers and nurses, people who want to do good. They want to make the world a better place. The big difference between journalists and these other professionals is the mechanism for doing so.

Nurses, for example, have a clear set of practices that lead to doing good. The work, using proven medical practices and personal warmth, to improve the health of citizens. They are trained in the technical practice of the work, and they understand why each practice must be executed properly in order to work, and they know exactly what "executed properly" means.

Journalists want to do good, but where do they learn what that means? Do journalism schools teach them how to spot bias on their own stories and remove it in order to prevent a "better" story? Can journalists identify and define what they think their role is in "doing good" and then link the professional practice to that?

Or maybe the big problem is that journalists are not like nurses, and their role is not to do good. Maybe if that piece disappeared, and journalists saw their role as simply to report what is going on it would be better. Imagine news reports without any inflection or perspective on what is better or worse for people. What about cable news without all the personal asides from reporters and anchors?

I spent an evening this past week eating dinner with six professionally trained chefs, top in the nation, and listening them debate their role, their goals, and whether their work was art or technique. It was fascinating, and it reminded my of the problems facing journalists (and educators). Except the chefs cooked great food, and no one argued with that.

Posted by: JennyD at September 21, 2005 8:15 AM | Permalink

Steve Lovelady,

A question. Do you employ the same logic/thought process that you expouse in the comment above at CJR Daily, or is it reserved especially for the PressThink comment section?

By logic, I mean the inference from Pitts' and van Steenwyck's personal experiences/anecdotes.

By thought process, I mean the weighing of ethos you've applied to Pitts and van Steenwyck.

Posted by: Sisyphus at September 21, 2005 8:25 AM | Permalink

"Jay, I thought you wanted ME, especially, to hate media bias somewhere else; I'm sure I'm among the ones causing you grief."

What, I only get one? Yes, Grey, go somewhere else with your artless, witless, programmatic, and hard core crusade.

You can't expect me to stand by while a forum I built is driven into the ground, or transformed into a propaganda exchange because some of you have this bizarre fantasy about meeting the media in person to denounce "it" here. You have zero right to treat this space that way--as if PressThink were your personal system for message-delivery to institutional forces--and you have abused ten fold whatever hospitality you have been shown.

I totally resent that, and your grim, duck-flattening bias drill too. And I resent, as well, this infantile longing to see me finally agree with you on this or that twisted observation, or finally "admit" some half-factual thing or another. I am not your Daddy, you don't need my agreement. Or wait, no, I am your Daddy, and Dad's in deep denial, so we better leave him be. Either way, I don't care. Just take your bias drill, and plug it in somewhere else.

Go. Be gone. To your own blogs go, bore yourselves from within, and make sure to crow about how closed minded I am.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 21, 2005 8:49 AM | Permalink

We haven't touched seriously on the problem of accuracy.
From time to time, we hear of surveys asking people who've been in the middle of something, or whose vocation or avocation a particular issue is, and have seen it reported in the media.
Invariably, they report the media got it wrong in at least one important sense.
I've seen examples of that affecting me personally. Some large, some small.

What amazes some folks who watch the journalism/public interface is that practically everybody says what the surveys say, while taking reporting on issues with which they are not familiar as probably accurate. While they're doing that, the bet is that those who actually know the issue are cussing the reporting as being wrong.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 21, 2005 8:52 AM | Permalink

Richard, there's mroe than accuracy. There's also understanding the field well enough to be accurate.

I see this so very well in education reporting. It is about budgets and banned books and the occasional uplifting feature on good school, good program, etc. Followed by the gloomy piece on falling test scores.

But reporters don't know enough about the science and practice of teaching to know how to ask what works and why. They can't ask about why a teacher, or a school uses a particular set of teaching practices, and what the goal is, how they assess the outcomes, etc.

Medical reporters do this routinely in stories. But education reporters don't.

So people like me sit out here and grit our teeth over the superficial news stories about teaching and learning. And I seem to be gritting my teeth more and more lately.

Posted by: JennyD at September 21, 2005 9:13 AM | Permalink

antimedia said:

And you keep complaining that the customers should shut up and go away. Seems odd behavior for a blog that purports to want a dialogue.

It's become very clear that Rosen doesn't really want a dialogue.

Posted by: Gary at September 21, 2005 9:22 AM | Permalink

Exactly! Now we are getting somewhere. I don't want any more dialogue with duck-flattening bias warriors. None. I am not interested. Is my mind closed to what they have to say? Yes! It definitely is. And you can quote me on that. Please quote me on that. If you need a link to explain "duck-flattening," here it is.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 21, 2005 9:26 AM | Permalink

I don't want any more dialogue with duck-flattening bias warriors. None. I am not interested. Is my mind closed to what they have to say? Yes! It definitely is.

Ignore the Elephant, but then complain about needing to shovel?

Gary: I came here via Instapundit. Sending screenshots and email back to Glenn is a courtesy, so he won't repeat this mistake.

"People of CBS News, you've had a year to think about it. How, if you are dedicated to truthtelling, could you have permitted the near destruction of your network's reputation for telling the truth? What explains your silence, September 9-20, 2004?"

Dick Meyer has come and gone without addressing your central question. I don't see it on PE either. [pushes past Elephant] Perhaps the lack of response from CBS is the answer?

Posted by: Fen at September 21, 2005 11:11 AM | Permalink

Dave: This absolutism that Fen, among many, is hilarious when you consider that my newspaper - as well as a significant number of newspapers across the country - endorsed Bush.

What's hillarious is that you consider that a disqualifier.

Posted by: Fen at September 21, 2005 1:59 PM | Permalink

/back on point - what would PE not say about this one:

What is Essential and Invisible to the Eye [Pallywood]

"It is a short video that focuses on footage of Palestinians besieging an Israeli checkpoint that is used in 60 Minutes. Landes uses the outtakes and a frame by frame analysis to show, convincingly in my view, that much of it was entirely faked."

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/09/what-is-essential-and-invisible-to-eye.html

Posted by: Fen at September 21, 2005 2:12 PM | Permalink

ami,

Bias explains CBS' behavior. Not the dread "liberal bias" that makes Rosen's head spin and vomit whirl out, but the bias that blinded CBS to the extent that they accepted dubious photocopied documents of unknown provenance from a known crackpot Bush-hater because it fit the story they had already arrived at. Selectively sifting the evidence, hearing what you want to hear--what else is that but bias? Do we need to find another clever name for it? This bias seemed to surmount the malevolent influence of Rather's corporate masters.

Oh, they were "under pressure". They feared being "scooped". It's still malpractice.

I think the response of CBS to Rosen's post was revealing. Still kind of stuck in self-defense mode. Still preferring lip service to genuine self-examination. Thinking maybe setting up a webified "letters to the editor" will take some heat off.

Just look at how upset they were about criticism of the duck story--why you drawing attention to that, Jay? Don't you know that's how we work? Next you'll complain that we strip all the complexity out of our pieces and use reductive quotes from TV-ready experts so that those on the far left end of the bell curve can still follow along. We get angry and coach others to sound angry--we're mad as hell and not going to take it any more!--because it helps us define our on-air personalities.

You can ask them hard questons about anything but *that*.

Posted by: Brian at September 21, 2005 3:01 PM | Permalink

Jay,

I understand your McDonald's analogy and I'm not dissing the motives of the people involved in the process of reporting news. Again, you have talked about this mentality, this religion. I know I entered journalism with just that mentality...that "i'm going to do-good" mentality. And then I was forced to write stories I didn't care about and I realized there was too much in journalism that WASN'T about making the world a better place and moved into politics instead. In fact what I found was that I was most happy writing for alternative weeklies who very much believe in advocacy journalism that is (in my mind) written with wit and verve. But that's a side issue.

Media, all media except blogs, are run as businesses. Even NPR and PBS, which are non-profits, are essentially run like businesses because they keep track of viewers and listeners and what's "popular" and what's not. And yes..they are a public good in the same way a Highway or a hospital is a public good. I still think a hospital is the best analogy, not McDonald's because we accept that a hospital FUNDEMENTALLY is serving a public need. I'd like to think that even the duck-flatterns out here agree they want a paper/TV station to give them the weather or just the lottery scores.

But where is that line? Where is that line between "business decision" and "public service?"

A hospital has to treat everyone in the ER but that doesn't mean they have to help out people with cancer who have no insurance. Or have to give that elective surgery to someone who isn't in their insurance group.

So CBS, in the name of running a business, gives a nice story about duck, which is little different to the news editor running a nice photograph of pets on Page 1 because it "sells."

But I've found that news people HATE it when you talk about media as a business. Not that they always disagree...but they say "well that's not motivating me." But it does motivate their editors.

Would blogs be a good idea of a media product that is not dictated by what is popular? I mean...ideally a blog isn't putting up cute pictures of pets because "it sells."

Posted by: catrina at September 21, 2005 3:03 PM | Permalink

"Although I realize it is not my place to question a journalist of your high credentials, these silk-clad keyboard Nazis make a compelling case. Please tell me that you were duped. Please tell me you and your producers simply overlooked this rascal’s shaky reputation or that at least you investigated these charges prior to their airing. Please tell me that MSNBC’s September 19th online “explanation” claiming that this was only a “misunderstanding” will not prevent you from offering your Meet the Press audience a complete accounting and a televised correction. And, I am sure that you will also want to inform your audience why no mention of this “misunderstanding” has ever been aired on NBC or MSNBC."

http://gmort.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Fen at September 21, 2005 3:07 PM | Permalink

Trained Auditor:

The idea of General Honore and Scott McClellan even in the same room is a delicious one.
It's sort of like trying to imagine Winston Churchill alongside Bugs Bunny.
Honore would eat McClellan for an appetizer before he even turned his attention to the main course.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 21, 2005 3:53 PM | Permalink

I take your point, Lovelady. But I was fantasizing about a McClellan who acted like Honore in the face of White House correspondents Plante, Moran and (especially) Gregory. I'd sign up for that pay-per-view event!

On another matter, specifically the intersection of the New York Times' subscription-only web access to columnists and pending NYT layoffs, I think the following comment is (as Jay likes to say) pretty "intelligent" (emphasis added):

"But I could see them losing Brooks or Tierney. This is the implicit danger of their new web firewall, as many have noted. Conservatives will not be inclined to pay $50 a year to read Brooks and Tierney, as good as they are. But the people who love Krugman and Dowd are already inclined to believe the New York Times is indispensible. And they just love Krugman and Dowd. Love, love, love. This will in turn send precisely the wrong feedback for the Times, confirming their strongest biases and undermining their already weak efforts at balance (the Times book review exempted). Krugman will become comparatively more popular because his slice of the shrinking pie will have increased.

I think in years to come we will see this pattern repeated in television and print as the Dinosaurs of the MSM chase their base rather than try to be all-purpose news providers. Fox, obviously, is accelerating this process." - Jonah Goldberg, National Review The Corner, Sept. 21, 2005

Unfortunately, Jay has declared off-limits in this forum any discussion about why certain readers may be considered the New York Times' (ideological) base.

Posted by: Trained Auditor at September 21, 2005 4:48 PM | Permalink

Now this is really scary. I find that I'm starting to agree with Trained Auditor, Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds.

I too think the Times is putting the wrong stuff behind the paywall -- if there has to be a paywall at all.
Here's what Reynolds had to say about it yesterday at Hugh Hewitt's radio blog:
"I think...the New York Times thinks it's going to make money selling op-eds, but hard news reporting is the Killer App for news media organizations. If they want to come up with opinion, they're competing with guys like me, and we can kick Paul Krugman's butt any day. If they do hard news gathering, and they actually report what's happening, and they report it straight and fast, they can go toe to toe with blogs pretty darn well."
Opinionated commentary is a dime a dozen. The blogosphere is crawling with it, of every stripe. As well as rants, screeds, and moonbat manifestos of all sorts. That's not a USP (unique selling point) for the big news engines. Their USP is the depth and breadth of their reporting. So why give away your USP for FREE while you're CHARGING for the stuff -- opinions -- that the world already has too much of ?
It doesn't make sense.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 21, 2005 5:54 PM | Permalink

So why give away your USP for FREE while you're CHARGING for the stuff -- opinions -- that the world already has too much of ? It doesn't make sense.

perhaps this is something of an experiment/stalking horse for a much broader subscription based NYTimes-OnLine, steve. Offering the "non-essential" opinions of columnists as a "pay to read" option may be a way of ironing out the kinks (which, from all accounts are significant) in the pay-to-read system. Once they have most of their current "dead tree" audience in the system, and have figured out the best way to process on-line subscriptions, I would not be surprised to see the Times follow the WSJ model, where its "pay to read" except for some specially designated content.

Posted by: ami at September 21, 2005 8:00 PM | Permalink

Steve, It makes sense to me, kind of. The value of dead-tree commentary is falling rapidly, but it isn't worthless yet. Why not cash in on the remaining value while there's still some left? I don't know how many people will pay to read Krugman and Dowd online, but it will be more than zero, and that's what the Times gets for them now. At the same time, increasing scarcity of the columns online might at least in the short term boost the value of the hard copy of the paper.

It still isn't clear to me that there is a "killer ap" online for newspapers. I'm not sure that the online market will ever support the extraordinary depth of general reporting found in papers like the NYT and Washington Post. Those days, I suspect, are gone forever.

Maybe something better will arise to replace it; lots of people are trying to figure out what that might be, and I have some notions of my own. But I think it would be suicidal for the big papers (other than, perhaps, the Wall Street Journal with its specialized content) to count on Internet revenues to compensate for hard-copy circulation losses. My guess is that the Times thinks so, too, and is making this move while it tries to figure out what the real strategy ought to be.

Whatever it is, it won't be going "toe to toe" with blogs. That strikes me as so wrong in so many ways that I scarcely know where to start. Which is why none of the discussion here has prompted me to actually go look at what CBS is doing on the web. I'd rather watch Jay drive over a duck.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 21, 2005 8:12 PM | Permalink

But what I really wanted to comment on was Jenny D's remarks about chefs and journalists. That set my head whirling, and maybe it's worth thinking a bit about how different these two jobs are.

I'm no chef, Jenny D, but I'm reasonably confident that if you came to my house I could cook you a meal that you would find tasty, satisfying and nutritious. If I was lucky enough, and you were hungry enough, you might find it worthy of high praise.

But although I'm a "professional" journalist (and former education reporter), I'm far less confident that I could write an education story to your liking. I would want a couple of days to bone up. I would need to talk to people, take lots of notes, write and revise. Even after all of that, your superior expertise likely would lead you to find errors or misinterpretations in my story, or at least missed shades of meaning that would be important to you but invisible to me.

So I probably would spend 10 times as much time on the story as on the meal and produce something that could be consumed in even less time. I would have to sell it for a tiny fraction of the cost of the meal, and, after all is said and done, I probably still would have at least a mildly dissatisfied customer.

No wonder the economics of journalism don't make sense anymore. The amazing thing is that they ever did.

Posted by: David Crisp at September 21, 2005 9:12 PM | Permalink

David Crisp.

You miss two points.

One is that if you were educated in the subject on which you were reporting in the first place, the pre-reporting cram session wouldn't be necessary. If you did, after all, have to do it, you'd have it on hand for the next time. After a couple of dozen such sessions, the necessity for doing such is greatly reduced. You'll see the same subject coming around again.

That leads to the question of getting journalists educated in real-world stuff. The number of journalists who are dumb-ass ignorant of military matters would a scandal if they were allowed to report on military matters. Um. Wait a moment....

Well, anyway, the second issue is that the reason journalism has paid is that, while the customer is dissatisfied when reading something about which he is at least an amateur (part from the Latin amo, amas, amat--to love), the reader, for some crazy reason, believes journos on subjects on which he is also ignorant. Go figure.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 21, 2005 9:29 PM | Permalink

Richard Aubrey:

You make some excellent points.
Your argument is exactly why the New York Times has Larry Altman, a doctor, covering medicine
And why the Wall Street Journal in its heyday had lawyers (Mike Gartner, Norm Pearlstine, Jim Stewart) covering law.
And why Newsweek had Col. David Hackworth covering military matters.
But the Altmans, the Gartners, the Pearstines, the Stewarts and the Hackworths do not come cheap. it takes a publication with a very fat budget to make those expenditures.
And, these days -- for reasons that we can argue about all day -- there aren't very many of those.
Not with Wall Street demanding that news companies produce a profit margin of 25% on revenues.
When that kind of return is required, why hire or a doctor or a lawyer or a colonel when you can hire a 22-year-old kid fresh out of East Jesus, Arkansaw, Junior College ?
I think that, finally, we have put our finger on the problem here.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at September 21, 2005 10:55 PM | Permalink

As a person who regularly glanced at the New York Times before the firewall, I'll comment on the decision. I enjoy Krugman, but find Dowd as irritating as cat's claws on a chalk board. I'm embarassed for her as often as not. I'll be damned if I'm paying subscription fees to read Paul Krugman or Frank Rich's editorials, as much as I like their work--let alone Dowd. I say this decision just makes the Times irrelevant faster.

Their increasingly Republican/black ops editorial policies (such as the endless and embarassing months of hero worshipping editorials for Judy Miller, her propaganda shop, and her apparent protection of Rove, Bolton, or her guilty self) have already alienated a large part of what used to be their natural base. This is just another nail.

I wonder how long it will take MSM practitioners to realize that there is a pretty sizable non-Fox audience out here just waiting for someone besides Amy Goodman to report the truth with any kind of consistency. Now that NPR has basically gone over to the Republicans, they don't get a dime from me either. The pickins are mighty slim.

You'd think one of these outlets might be interested in making a buck. I guess you'd be wrong. My neo-liberal faith in the market is dashed yet again.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at September 21, 2005 10:59 PM | Permalink

Mark Anderson:

I wonder how long it will take MSM practitioners to realize that there is a pretty sizable non-Fox audience out here just waiting for someone besides Amy Goodman to report the truth with any kind of consistency. [link added]

Interesting. I wonder, Mark, if you might persuade Amy to correct this story that I highlighted in WMD in Iraq? Calm Down, Amy.

Today, in Headlines:

Army to Begin Recruiting High School Dropouts
In military news - the Army has opened up a new pool of potential military recruits: high school drop-outs. Under a plan announced Tuesday, the Army can begin enlisting recruits without a high school diploma if they agree to take the GED test. The military is offering to pay for the recruits to attend a GED test preparation class and to cover the cost of taking the GED exam. This policy change comes as the Army, National Guard and Army Reserve are all on pace to fall short of its annual recruiting goals.

I haven't been able to find any announcement yesterday (or recently) about such a plan. If you could provide a link, something Amy didn't do, I'd appreciate it.

In fact, this policy has been in place since 2000. It's called the Army GED Plus Enlistment Program.

Current retention and recruiting figures are here.

Posted by: Sisyphus at September 22, 2005 12:16 AM | Permalink

Tim,
I sent the following e-mail to Democracy Now. I'll let you know what kind of response I get.

"Dear Democracy Now!,
A friend of mine suggests that the GED recruitment program dates from the year 2000 and the following link seems to back him up. GED Plus
Could you clarify for me how current DOD policy differs from this program or point me to a source or link for today's headline suggesting this is a new program?
Regards,
Mark Anderson"

Posted by: Mark Anderson at September 22, 2005 2:59 AM | Permalink

Well, it is worth noting that neither Dick Meyer of CBS.com (miffed about the ducks) nor anyone at CBS News answered or acknowledged my question about remaining silent Sep. 9-20.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 22, 2005 2:59 AM | Permalink

I want to answer a couple of things from above:

Steve, for the record, I'm much cheaper than Altman, at least as knowledgeable in my subject area, and I'll bet I'm more fun at parties. But the Times, nor any other paper would ever hire me. Why? Because they look first for journalism experience, and second for content knowledge.

For David and Steve, more about the chefs. One of their complaints was that people don't understand or appreciate the true cost of preparing a GREAT restaurant meal. We're talking high-end. They say Americans are conditioned to think food is cheap, and don't see any difference between food and a great meal. In other words, they're making some of the same arguments here, that great journalism costs money, requires resources, etc.

what I thought about, though, is that restaurant food and news have become commodities. You can get them at lots of places, at varying prices, of varying quality. You can, with food, make it yourself using the amazing number of ingredients available these days.

That comparison, food and news as commodities, explains for me why the economics of restaurants and news outlets are faltering. If people don't value the extras brought to the product by the big news outlet, they won't pay.

It used to be that reporters brought objectivity. But I think news organizations squandered that resource, if they ever had it, not intentionally but through lack of attention. They can't go back. Now what?

Posted by: JennyD at September 22, 2005 6:48 AM | Permalink

Steve:

Not so fast.

You make "Hackworth" (and the other luminaries) into a plural, as if there are more than one of him. Actually, there's not even one of him any more, but you see my point.

Hack did a kind of reporting, the kind you'd expect from somebody who thought he should have been promoted at least one more time before being passed over.
There was a book called "Soldier!" by an ex-Ranger named Tony--something, I can't remember--who did almost exactly the same thing except he wasn't quite as outrageous as Hackworth and so didn't get the journos' attention. I spent some time in a hospital with an old friend of his and came to the conclusion he was annoyed at having been passed over. Twice passed over for promotion and you're out, or you can take an enlisted rank. I saw a major turn into a staff sergeant once. Not pretty.

To the larger point. There are not many of these folks and, as Hackworth was, they are not simple reporters, coming closer to investigative columnists, if there is such a category.

And it isn't necessary to have been a retired light colonel to be sufficiently educated in military affairs to be able to not make hugeous blunders.

Dan Rather, who for various reasons was pretty sound on the troops, had a story when Kuwait was liberated in 1991. Two young reporters said to him, "We thought only losers joined the Army." Rather was standing in the middle of the end of a masterpiece of military action, which showed everthing from courage to planning excellence to training to professionalism. How on earth did they get to be so stupid? Was the normal ration of smart extracted from them in j-school? Being so stupid, how did they stay so stupid? Being so stupid, how'd they get assigned to cover a war? Two possibilities. One is that the editor was similarly stupid, or the other was that the editor wasn't, but wanted stupid reporters in the Gulf on his employer's credit card...for some reason we journalism-mistrusters can think about.

During some hearings after the war, Walter Cronkite was asked if there was any excuse for all the pre-war doomsaying about how our stuff wouldn't work, wouldn't shoot, wouldn't fly, wouldn't roll, wouldn't communicate, troops were soft and ill-trained, when it all worked pretty damned well. Cronkite said stoutly that he thought the reporting before the war was just fine, with the air of a man telling you he knew exactly what you were saying but would be burned on a griddle before he'd admit it.

Anyway, the point is not that Hackworth(s) are the minimum standard, which, having been set, means we groundlings can't expect many of them.
The point is to avoid egeregious stupidity and appalling ignorance. We'll start there.

The metaphor of the high-end, ten-star meal is faulty. In this context, that would be The Book.

Daily or weekly journalism would be the ordinary meal, prepared by somebody who has figured out how to get it all done at the same time, get the green leafies into a form even kids will choke down, and nobody gets sick. This doesn't take a Guide Michelin graduate, but it does take a bit of work to get to that level.
Yeah. That's it. Let's see if journalists can do as well reporting as the ordinary housewife does with the weekday supper.

Posted by: RIchard Aubrey at September 22, 2005 7:51 AM | Permalink

Just for fun. To see what amateurs can do, and to contrast it with the crap the professionals do, see a blog called "The Adventures of Chester".
They have a flash presentation of recent battles, along with a comparison of reporting by journos and commanders.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 22, 2005 8:01 AM | Permalink

there seems to be an inherent contradiction in the criticism coming from the far-right, to wit:

One is that if you were educated in the subject on which you were reporting in the first place, the pre-reporting cram session wouldn't be necessary. If you did, after all, have to do it, you'd have it on hand for the next time. After a couple of dozen such sessions, the necessity for doing such is greatly reduced. You'll see the same subject coming around again.

That leads to the question of getting journalists educated in real-world stuff.

The problem here is that with knowledge comes opinions, and the inevitable "bias" bugaboo. A reporter with absolutely no scientific background, assigned to cover the "Intelligent Design" debate, would likely wind up with a "balanced" ("unbiased") he said/she said report. A reporter who was extremely familiar with the scientific basis of evolution would doubtless wind up with an article that reflected skepticism toward the "Intelligent Design" advocates---and would be accused of "bias".

One often sees the nature of the reporting change as reporters become more familiar with the subject at hand. When Bush started pushing the need for Privatization as a means of dealing with the so-called "crisis in Social Security", many reporters repeated Bush's assertions uncritically, as if privatizing Social Security would prevent the so-called "crisis". At that point, supporters of Social Security were complaining of "media bias." As reporters learned more about the true nature of both Social Security and the privatization scheme Bush was pushing, the reporting (rightfully) became much more skeptical of Bush's pronouncements, and Bush supporters started complaining of "media bias".

Posted by: ami at September 22, 2005 9:44 AM | Permalink

ami.

If all we got was "he said, she said" reporting, that would be a step forward.

It seems, though, that part of your analysis is flawed. You don't need knowledge to have an opinion. In fact, it's easier to have an opinion if you don't know much.

If the knowledgeable reporters put their opinions in columns, and restricted the use of their knowledge to asking critical questions in reporting, that would be ten steps forward.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at September 22, 2005 9:58 AM | Permalink

Thread closed. New post: Charging for Columnists: Notes and Comment on the Launch of TimesSelect.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 22, 2005 11:09 AM | Permalink