PressThink: "I’m Not Going to Talk About the Back Story."

"I’m Not Going to Talk About the Back Story."

Bill Keller is a "watch our pages" man. That is how he would prefer to answer your question about the Times, whether you are a reader in Chelsea, a reporter for Salon, or Charlie Rose. With him the stoic conceit continues, but under conditions of greater transparency it makes a lot less sense.

(New post alert, Jan. 1. Times Public Editor: Bill Keller Stonewalled Me.)

You can find the latest on the transparency gap at the New York Times by reading Editor & Publisher, and Salon (where I am quoted.) The facts so far: On Dec. 15, the Times published an important story that hit official Washington hard: Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. It said that the National Security Agency has since 2002 had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without a warrant because President Bush decreed it. The story was based on confidential sources.

“Without a warrant” prompted Senator Arlen Specter to promise hearings in the Senate, and outraged others in Congress. “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” Specter said. Questions immediately arose about how the story came to be, and especially why it appeared now. (Days before a vote on the USA Patriot Act, the same day as the elections for parliament in Iraq.) But also: should any newspaper be revealing secret programs intended to stop another terror strike? The Times did not take the lead in addressing those questions. In fact it said very little, so others began to fill in the picture.

On Dec. 17 Paul Farhi of the Washington Post reported that the revelations about the NSA are in a forthcoming book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” by James Risen, the lead reporter on the wiretapping story. The Times account hadn’t mentioned that.

On Dec. 20, James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times reported that “editors at the paper were actively considering running the story about the wiretaps before Bush’s November showdown with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.” The Times and Keller had said the key facts became known “a year ago.” Writers at the Times who talked to Risen—alas, no names—said that was inaccurate. NPR also had the same information.

On Dec. 20, it was reported by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter that “the president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office.” A significant fact, adding drama and raising the political stakes. The original had said only, “The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article.”

Then Gabriel Sherman of the New York Observer reported on Dec. 21 that “according to multiple Times sources, the decision to move forward with the story was accelerated by the forthcoming publication of Mr. Risen’s book.” Sherman added the date of Bush’s meeting with Times bosses—Dec. 6—and said Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman was there too.

In each case it appears the New York Times knows the news, but withholds it. Sherman wrote that discussion of the wiretap story “has been off-limits since it was published.” A source in the Washington bureau was quoted: “Someone on high told reporters not to talk about it.” Why? We don’t know. Heavyweights in journalism can’t figure it out. I certainly can’t. And the newspaper won’t say much.

The Times did issue a statement from Keller on Dec. 16, the day after the story was published on the Web. It told part of the history. The paper was initally persuaded not to publish on national security grounds. The Administration said: if you run this story, it will harm intelligence collection; also, nobody who knows the facts doubts that we’re legal. Keller said further reporting convinced the Times that it could publish without harm to national security, and that reservations about warrantless espionage by the NSA were felt in many parts of the government.

In this statement Keller began to make a case for the soundness of Times judgment (which includes the slowness of Times judgment) but it was brief, nothing but a down payment on a full defense of the article and the reasoning behind it. And Keller’s statement had none of the facts later uncovered by Farhi, Rainey, Alter, and Sherman.

“The publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim’s forthcoming book or any other event,” Keller told the L.A. Times in second statement. “We published the story when we did because after much hard work it was fully reported, checked and ready, and because, after listening respectfully to the administration’s objections, we were convinced there was no good reason not to publish it.” The Observer’s account contains this:

After The Times decided not to publish it at that time, Mr. Risen went away on book leave, and his piece was shelved and regarded as dead, according to a Times source.

“I’m not going to talk about the back story to the story,” Mr. Keller said by phone on Dec. 20. “Maybe another time and another subject.”

The back story? I know what he means, but it’s hard to call it a “back story” when the president of the United States confronts the publisher of the New York Times over freedom of the press, national security, and possibly another leak investigation. (Bush later said the disclosures were “shameful.”)

Obviously there are things the Times learned that it cannot tell us about the NSA, and about its conflicts with the Administration. This may account for some of the silences and gaps. But what Keller, and his crew, and Sulzberger with his ally Catherine Mathis (Times spokeswoman) don’t seem to get is that the Times could signal to readers when it knows it’s not leveling with us.

“When you think of the New York Times, transparency is not the first quality that leaps to mind, but they have to explain themselves,” said Tom Kunkel, dean of the J-school at University of Maryland and a former newspaper editor. “Even if you can’t tell them something, in my experience news consumers always appreciate it when you make an effort to explain why you can’t.”

I’m sure there’s a story to this chronic lack of transparency at the Times. At least part of it is a matter of public record. In May, 2005, deputy managing editor Al Siegal led a committee of Times people—heavily weighted toward the Washington bureau—who examined ways of “preserving our readers’ trust.” It was an attempt to come to grips with credibility problems the Times itself had identified after going over the crash sites: Wen Ho Lee, Jayson Blair, the Howell Raines regime, the WMD story— but not yet the fall of Judy Miller.

The report (available as a pdf file) was called Preserving Our Readers’ Trust: A Report to the Executive Editor. (That would be Keller.) News accounts about it focused on confidential sources, and the rules governing their use, but an equally powerful theme was transparency— and how to create a “dialogue with our publics.”

Listen to these recommendations from twenty of Keller’s best people— the Credibility Group:

“First, there is much the paper can do to consolidate its readers’ trust. We start with being more open and forthcoming.”

That really hasn’t happened. And so the “consolidation of trust” isn’t happening, either.

“Explaining ourselves actively and earnestly to our various publics can only strengthen the bond between the Times and its loyal readers.”

Actively and earnestly means you don’t treat the demand for explanation as a threat, an option, or something to do only in a generous mood. It means you explain willingly so people know how you operate. If they know how you operate they can more easily decide to trust you.

The Times is hardly clueless about this, as Farhad Manjoo pointed out in Salon. Just last week, Kurt Eichenwald wrote a “Reporter’s Essay,” a companion to his investigation of Webcam porn and kids. It’s an explainer for his complicated interactions with Justin, the exploited teen he wrote about and helped.

Anyone who pays attention to American politics could predict that a story based on leaks about a classified program the president wanted would get intense scrutiny and probably come under attack. And on Dec. 17, Texas Republican John Cornyn denounced the Times on the floor of the Senate: “It’s perhaps not a coincidence that just before the vote for the cloture on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the New York Times released this story.” Cornyn also said the Times was trying to push Risen’s book. (See David Folkenflik’s report for NPR.)

But with “Bush Secretly Lifted” there was no Eichenwald-style explainer, just one paragraph:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Alex Jones, a former reporter for the Times, and a biographer of the ruling family, noticed it. “It’s as though there are two Times minds at work here,” he told Salon. The first is stoic, and hostile to “meta” communication, which in this view detracts from the primary work. Traditionally (that is to say up until the ground shifted beneath them a few years ago) the editors of the New York Times tried not to talk about the New York Times, or indeed to “notice” it, and you saw little in the way of self-examination. It just came out with more journalism.

In that era, the ideal answer to any question about faulty reporting or editorial priorities was: watch the paper. Don’t ask us to talk about it; we’ll just give you non-replies. In Ken Auletta’s recent New Yorker profile of Sulzberger, he quotes Keller at a November staff meeting saying he was concerned about “orgies of self-absorption that distract us from our more important work.” That being open about decision-making counts as newsroom narcissism is also part of the stoic view.

Bill Keller is a “watch our pages” man. That is how he would prefer to answer your question about the Times, whether you are a reader in Chelsea, a reporter for Salon, or Charlie Rose calling. With him the stoic conceit continues, but under conditions of greater transparency it makes a lot less sense. This is what the leaks from his own newsroom are telling him.

The Times of the 21st century does talk about itself… sometimes. (A famous example.) This is what Jones meant by two minds. It knows how to run an explainer laying out Kurt Eichenwald’s dealings with sources, and opening up for examination—and criticism—the ethical calls he made. But then on other occasions, with higher stakes, it “forgets” it knows how to be self-scrutinizing and goes back to the era of “the Times doesn’t talk about itself.”

In fact, the golden age of self-examination at the New York Times began in 2000 and is still going on. But something is wrong in the execution. Which is why PressThink ran Ron Brynaert’s guest post: Does the New York Times Have a Learning Disability? (Oct. 31)

“The executive editor and the two managing editors should share responsibility for writing a column that deals broadly with matters about the newspaper. The column should appear regularly in a fixed spot, ideally every other week and perhaps on Page 2 of the Week in Review or alternating with the Public Editor in his space.”

This column by the top of the masthead never happened. And as a result Keller’s preferred method of addressing Times readers about matters of public controversy is the leaked memo to staff that finds it way to Romenesko within ten minutes of his pushing send, and then becomes news. Why he has chosen this method is not clear to me. Twenty of his best people told him in May 2005 that he and his team should be alternating with the public editor, in a column that spoke directly to the issues of trust, openness and authority that so vex the Times today. Such a forum would have been very useful in the summer and fall of 2005.

“The newsroom should establish a coherent, flexible system for evaluating public attacks on our work and determining whether they require a public response, and in what form.”

This was political realism by the Credibility Group. They wanted to do away with the pretense that “the work speaks for itself.” (Therefore you shouldn’t talk about it.) The Group said it straight out: “We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself. In today’s media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility. Critics, competitors and partisans can too easily caricature who we are and what we do. And loyal readers gain no solid understanding of what the truth really is.” But this strong belief—backed by a sharp analysis—was not enough to move Keller, Sulzberger and Mathis.

“Nytimes.com should conduct frequent Q & A forums with department heads and other senior editors.”

Didn’t happen. The Washington Post does 30-35 live discussions a week: Q & A with editors who oversee coverage, reporters who cover the news, and columnists like Dan Froomkin and Dana Milbank. This innovation hasn’t come to the Times.

“Explore the possibility of creating a Times blog that promotes a give-and-take with readers while satisfying the standards of our journalism.”

Didn’t happen. The post.blog was able to air the controversy involving Dan Froomkin and John Harris, and it gave readers a place to talk back to the Post with a vengeance. A Times blog would be equally valuable on occasions when there is controversy about the Times— although it has to be done carefully. Instead there’s this.

“The newspaper should improve our interaction with television and radio programs. We should devise a strategy governing when and where it makes sense for us to be on TV and radio.”

That means Keller does “Newshour” on PBS the day after the wiretapping story is released, and brings the reporters with him on “Charlie Rose” the same night, while others well briefed—investigations editor David Barstow, Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman—head to “Nightline” and “Larry King.” The works speaks, and then you speak for it. It has authority because you respond with authority when asked tough questions about judgment calls.

“We need to be more assertive about explaining ourselves — our decisions, our methods, our values, how we operate. We need to do this with regularity and in a variety of forums. We particularly need to do this at times when we are not under attack.”

Don’t heal yourself, just hear yourself, New York Times. “With regularity.” “Variety of forums.” “More assertive about explaining.”

“We fully accept that there are those who love to hate The Times. Though there may be no dissuading them, often there is value in engaging with more open-minded critics.”

If you don’t have online Q and A’s, and you don’t go on the air to explain, and you don’t answer reporters questions, and you don’t have a blog where you can discuss it, and you don’t want to go into the back story because that wouldn’t be stoic… then how is engagement with open-minded critics going to ever take place? In soundbites and one-paragraph faxes and Eric Lichtblau telling Salon, “I’m afraid we’re referring all calls to Catherine Mathis in corporate PR…”? Not likely.

It’s tempting for Times people to say: no matter what we say, we are going to get slammed by the left and the right. But that’s an excuse for devaluing all criticsm. The Credibility Group grasped how lame that was.

“Productive communication is certainly possible with a much larger body of people — readers and nonreaders alike — whose opinions of The Times are not so fixed. We should focus our efforts on them, with the goal of making it far easier for them to see more than unanswered attacks on our ethics and professionalism.”

Hear, hear.

The modern era of transparency at the Times began with a curiosity, an editor’s note (called an “assessment”) about the coverage of Wen Ho Lee that took note of certain problems and regrets. (See PressThink, From Wen Ho Lee to Judy Miller.) It was a strained performance for those accustomed to the luxury of “we don’t talk about ourselves.” Among those who had to talk about the editor’s note—an unprecedented revision in a pattern of coverage—was Bill Keller, then the managing editor. Here’s what he told a New York Observer reporter who had asked about after-effects:

If you mean, are we going to back away from aggressive investigative reporting, the answer is an emphatic, categorical ‘No.’ If you mean are we going to select a scapegoat to hang for shortcomings in a generally excellent body of reporting, the answer is an equally emphatic ‘No.’ Beyond that, your answer will be in the paper. Watch our journalism.

Watch our journalism worked in its day. But for capturing what was wrong with “we don’t talk about the Times,” the better source is reporter Jeff Gerth, who wrote a lot of the Wen Ho Lee stories that were assessed. Gerth said to Howard Kurtz, who wanted to know what he thought about the editor’s note: “I don’t talk about the Times’ business, but as a reporter I’m glad that other people talk about theirs.”

I don’t think there’s any future for an attitude like that. People don’t trust its one-wayness. If the Times can’t learn to converse its troubles are going to get worse.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

New PressThink, Jan 1. Times Public Editor: Bill Keller Stonewalled Me. “Let’s remember, as we contemplate public editor Barney Calame’s stinging Jan. 1 column, Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence, that Bill Keller hired Calame and he’s the only one who can fire him…”

Late breaking link! Editors weblog: The difficulties of increasing newspaper transparency.

How does transparency work?

Let’s take Bush Secretly Lifted… Here’s my quick sketch.

The editors, also called the Masthead, assign a reporter to do the back story—the internal-to-the-Times part—which should run when the main event runs. That reporter’s job is to avoid getting scooped on what happened at the Times. Given the events of this year, it seems obvious that an outsider hired on a contract basis would work best. To expect Times people to report on their bosses is inhuman.

The Mastead itself and, through its directive, everyone else at the Times has to cooperate with the backstory reporter so as to produce a more complete and truthful account. The same person writes follow-up stories as the Times itself enters the news stream.

Several of the editors make themselves available in the first two days for interviews, call-in shows, online chats, and television programs, dividing up the work of explaining and justifying the journalism the Times just did, while making the case for its significance, like Keller began to do here.

The executive editor designates one journalist involved in the story—on rare occasions himself, a subeditor, maybe a writer he trusts—to more actively engage in the debate that follows from publication, and to stay with it for as long as it lasts. The point person responds to Times critics when they have a point, and goes on the offensive when the story is unfairly attacked.

Meanwhile, on the Web side, Nytimes.com prepares a concise and carefully written FAQ that has all the key facts about the story, statements from the editors answering questions smart readers would have, the historical and background material (in this case the history of the Times restraining itself at the request of the White House) and links to the additional journalism the Times has presented around and after the main story— a home page for larger narrative. This page needs separate sections for the criticism and reaction in the press, and blogger reactions.

The Times should have its own Scoble, Microsoft’s in-house blogger with a large readership. The Scoble Figure tracks the politics of the story’s reception online, accumulates links to what’s being said about it, combats false information circulating on the Web, and engages in argument, sometimes criticizing the Times, sometimes defending it, and sometimes having two—or more—minds. In other words: a real person who can react in real time.

The Scoble-Blog, the FAQ page, the online Q and A’s (and the Public Editor’s web journal) would all have comments as well, so that reader discussion of the Times takes place at the Times. To Scoble-ize the New York Times would probably be the best early warning system the newspaper could have.

Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times says transparency is a crock and the nation is full of paranoids making like press critics.

The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation. Instead, it’s getting bipartisan abuse and another round of endless demands for explanations and “transparency.” (In case you haven’t noticed, “transparency” is this year’s “closure.”)

For a different view see Editor & Publisher.

CJR Daily weighs in: “Bush’s intervention to try to stop newspaper stories in the works is not just a ‘back story.’ To the contrary, a case can be made that it is the real story. In both instances, it is clear, even just from the surface evidence, that the White House had a part in dissuading the editors from, in the Post’s case, running a crucial piece of the story, and in the Times’ case, from running the story at all for more than a year.”

Howard Kurtz talks about the back story with Keller (Dec. 26 column):

“The decision to hold the story last year was mine,” Keller says. “The decision to run the story last week was mine. I’m comfortable with both decisions. Beyond that, there’s just no way to have a full discussion of the internal procedural twists that media writers find so fascinating without talking about what we knew, when, and how — and that I can’t do.”

Kurtz also reveals a meeting between Bush and Leonard Downie that Downie won’t confirm.

Don’t miss Digby on Deborah Howell. A brilliant rant about a frustrating, play-it-safe ombudsman-ee column on military recruiting stats.

Related PressThink… Guest Writer Steve Smith: Fortress Journalism Failed. The Transparent Newsroom Works. (Nov. 23, 2005)

Tom Maguire, They’re Not Going To Stop:

Look - my inner geek is finding this to be very interesting. But is there any way in the world that the Times can be persuaded that this just might not be in America’s best interest, even if it has some slight potential to embarrass Bush?
I only ask as a concerned citizen; as a vicious partisan, I think the NY Times, in combination with the Moore-Streisand wing of the party, is pushing the Dems off a cliff.

What is the Dem message here? “Oh my gosh, that evil Bush is spying on Al Qaeda and anyone who talks to them - as Democrats, we will never do that!”

Maguire says the Times is engaged in a “war on America.” Dean Esmay goes further: “Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing—it is high treason.”

Here are the questions and answers I sent to Salon for this article by Farhad Manjoo:

When is it OK to bow to the government in such matters? I don’t think we know enough about what the Bush Administration told the Times to know if it “bowed” to pressure or behaved responsibly.
Should the Times have printed its piece before the election? The information we have does not permit me to say. I don’t know what national security concerns may have caused the Times to delay, do you? There could be a lot more to it than we know. However, it would be pretty bad if the Times had the wiretapping story before the ‘04 election but tried to tell us it didn’t when finally it decided to publish in 2005. That would be deceiving your readers. So I’m worried about that.

Is it serving its audience well now? Very well, yes. It is serving your audience and the American public to uncover something like warrantless wiretaps that evade the law, and to force the President to explain himself. When Congressional committees announce investigations, Senators push back, editorialists condemn, rival reporters get busy, and a storm of protest follows from publication of the story, the Times is the one making this explosion of democracy possible. It all has a common source. That is public service at its highest level— if the story holds up.

Where the Times is not serving readers well is explaining what happened in the struggle to get the story out. Here I see the same mistakes that were made during the Miller crisis— getting beat on news you own, giving out as little information as possible, devising explanations that don’t explain, limiting the authorized speakers to a two or three, forcing candor to come from confidential sources, and behaving like we’re lucky to get what little they give us. I find it baffling and counter-productive in the extreme.

James Bowman, writing in the New Criterion: What “Objectivity”?

According to Katharine Q. Seelye, writing the paper’s own account of the [May 2005] report, it had “recommended taking a variety of steps, including having senior editors write more regularly about the workings of the paper, tracking errors in a systematic way and responding more assertively to the paper’s critics.” Apparently there was no sense of contradiction on the part either of Miss Seelye or the Times between the objective of “preserving our readers’ trust” and “responding more assertively to the paper’s critics,” though surely on the face of it trust would seem to be more likely to be preserved if the paper adopted a stance of humility rather than assertiveness towards its critics.

Media Bistro asked media observers for predictions on what might happen in ‘06. One of mine was: “The paths of The New York Times and The Washington Post will continue to diverge. (65 percent probability)…”

Finally, the Daily Peg has essentially gone dead but Texas Gigs is more alive.

Posted by Jay Rosen at December 24, 2005 11:36 AM Print

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Transparency" is easy to accomplish when one is proud of one's accomplishments, but transparency is a whole different kettle of fish when you've screwed up.

There is an implied message of "guilt" in the opacity of people like Keller and Downie --- a sense that they know that their coverage (and failures of coverage) have had an impact on the political fate of this nation.

Nothing speaks so loudly to this guilt than the Times' equivocation about the date on which it found out about the warrantless domestic spying -- they knew about it before the last Presidential election, yet held the story back....and when it was finally reported, tried to give the impression that it wasn't discovered until after the election.

What is shocking is that Keller actually bought the "national security" argument in the first place -- as if there were thousands of American citizens conspiring with foreign terrorist organizations who assumed that they could make calls to their collaborators overseas without worrying about being surveilled because of their detailed knowledge of US policies concerning domestic spying.

Keller screwed up -- and he isn't being "transparent" about that screw-up because there is no one to blame for it but Keller.

Posted by: ami at December 24, 2005 12:18 PM | Permalink

What is shocking is that Keller actually bought the "national security" argument in the first place -ami

If this were FDR asking the New York Times to not publish a story in 1944 for national security reasons, I don't think anyone would have a problem with it.

This story does shed interesting light on the relationship between the Times and the Administration that vilifies it occasionally in public addresses.

Also interesting that the precedent of jailing reporters over the Plame leak may well lead to the same thing here.

Back to the meta-story ... your suggestions for the Times, Jay, would allow it to catch up to the Post, as far as interactivity is concerned -- and fight that sense that the Post has surpassed the Times as the top paper.

The Times feels awfully static at the end of 2005. Really, the biggest change (the only change) to the Times' web presence in the past few years has been the Op-Ed firewall. And that clever orange stripe.

"Grey Lady," indeed.

I would guess that "watch our coverage" is a way of projecting professionalism -- not stooping to street to slug it out with the writhing masses, and not allowing amateurs to post inside the palace.

But that is an outmoded, outdated way of thinking.

These are problems with perception of interactivity -- seeing it as something that degrades the paper rather than strengthening it.

Call it the "Times Bubble" ... ?

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 24, 2005 3:27 PM | Permalink

well, its not 1944, the President isn't FDR, al Qaeda isn't the Axis powers, 9-11 wasn't Pearl Harbor, and tapping the phones of American citizens isn't the D-Day invasion.

But except for those things, I see your point.

Posted by: ami at December 24, 2005 3:44 PM | Permalink

Depending on who you hear it from, the Times screwed up by sitting on the story, or for revealing it at all.

The whole thing is so ham-handed that the first thing I thought of was: How many mistakes can these guys make in a single calendar year? Here in Massachusetts, you get three tickets in a calendar year, you have to go to traffic school.

(Journalism Traffic School would make a great comedy sketch).

Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and a bigger and better new year for everybody (let's include the Times and the nation in that wish, too).

Posted by: Lisa Williams at December 24, 2005 10:35 PM | Permalink

Jay,

That's a terrific essay, one that raises many good points. You lay out a users-guide for the MSM: How To Become Smartly Transparent in Three Easy Lessons*

* Without relinquishing control entirely.

I fear we're still some miles down the road from being able to hear this criticism clearly, but the map is there.

As for the Times, I am uneasy that they held such a great story so long. I'm not clear how revealng the broad architecture of a spying program without reference to any particular case would jeopardize anything. I assume that an Al Qaeda operative assumes that the Great Satan is trying to listen in at all times...

Perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But that circles back to your point...

Michael

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 25, 2005 1:01 PM | Permalink

There are many questions that bother me about the NYT story ... and the successive feeding frenzy.

I'm amazed that the NYT could keep this story an exclusive secret for a year, or more.

How does that work? How did the NYT find out about this: "according to government officials", "some officials familiar with the continuing operation", "[n]early a dozen current and former officials", "[a]ccording to those officials and others", ...

None of these "officials and others" leaked or talked to other journalists - over a year or more?

How many in the NYT organization knew? None leaked?

Is this an interesting aspect of the culture? Is it part of the reason that the "behind the curtain" culture is not being discussed?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 25, 2005 2:19 PM | Permalink

Tim (Sisyphus): I don't know how it remained secret for a year +. I do know that when the Times chooses to say almost nothing about it, the suspicion builds that it doesn't explain because it can't-- meaning there is no explanation that can stand the light of day.

That's more or less what ami means by: "Keller screwed up -- and he isn't being 'transparent' about that screw-up because there is no one to blame for it but Keller."

If that's the case--and I'm not saying it is, only if--then there's no difference between the "stoic" approach and the "stonewall" option.

Michael: Thanks for that assessment. Re: "some miles down the road from being able to hear this criticism clearly," Jeff Jarvis pointed me to this downcast post by Scott Anderson of the Tribune company. It's about the ride share board at Craigslist during the NYC transit strike, which was full of activity, and the same service offered by Tribune's Newsday.com, which was like a ghost town. Money quote:

Yet another crisis and Craigslist commands the community. Newspaper.coms command... Well, not the community.
Squared isn’t at all picking on his colleagues at Newsday; in fact, he’s very proud that they put the rideshare board into play. It’s just frustrating that even when we TRY, we more often than not find we are absolutely losing what may be one of the most important parts of the business as it more and more moves online — the ability to connect people to one another and to activate conversations.

That's not a few miles down the road from... that's Scott watching Craig's tail lights disappear.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 25, 2005 4:57 PM | Permalink

Jay

Our (that is, large newspapers) response to the web age is a glass half-filled/half empty puzzle. Sometimes I see real progress, with the blogs and myriad chats and the photo libraries and news bites. Other times, on questions of transparency and on some business matters, we're doing considerably less well.

That this isn't for lack of urgency. Our internal chat boards, and discussion within the newspaper, reflect a near obsession with trying to respond to this new age. What the Froomkin brouhaha obscured is that political staff aside many reporters and editors at the WP are fine with the blogs, and indeed with all sorts of steps needed to respond to the web age.

On transparency, work remains. The ride board stuff and Newsday is more curious: Why do you think it works for craigslist and not for Newsday? And can newspapers transform themselves into a similar sort of mercantile town-meeting place?

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 25, 2005 6:45 PM | Permalink

On transparency, work remains.

I don't think that the work that remains is really about transparency qua transparency. The problem is what "transparency" would reveal about the way that journalism works -- "opacity" persists because there is something to hide, not because "transparency" is so difficult to achieve.

The ride board stuff and Newsday is more curious: Why do you think it works for craigslist and not for Newsday? And can newspapers transform themselves into a similar sort of mercantile town-meeting place?

This is curious -- my first theory was that if you looked up "ride sharing" or "ride boards" on google, craigslist would pop up at that top --- it doesn't --- not even close.

How heavily did Newsday promote its rideshare boards? Was it up and running well before the strike actually occurred? Was it prominently displayed on Newsday's homepage the week before the strike?

Posted by: ami at December 25, 2005 8:44 PM | Permalink

Newsday's bloggy ride board was for Long Islanders. The Craigslist link was to all of New York City.

The proper comparison should have been drawn to the Craigslist Long Island rideshare board: link.

Looks like a ghost town draw to me.

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 25, 2005 9:38 PM | Permalink

Kurtz shows that WaPo owes 'backstory' too:

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.

But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 25, 2005 10:43 PM | Permalink

It's clear from that Kurtz piece that Keller thinks media writers like me and Kurtz and Sherman are the ones who care about the "back story."

Ron says the proper comparison should have been drawn to the Craigslist Long Island rideshare board. I don't think so. People go where the critical mass of users is. Long Island people probably use the New York City Craigslist.

Michael: I believe you about the sense of urgency. I think a great many people in newspaper newsrooms have that feeling now. They aren't clueless at all and they want to move forward: But as Jarvis says:

Craig created a tool and stood back and, as I now quote him in every PowerPoint to which I subject people, followed one simple rule: “Get out of the way.” He handed over control.
Newspapers are allergic to that idea; they have defined themselves by their control: They report, they confirm, they edit, they package, they product, they distribute. We read.

The Post is way better than most, though.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 12:09 AM | Permalink

Among the things that most bug me about this situation is Keller's statement that Risen's book had no impact on the paper's decision to publish the story. If true, that means Keller was willing to get scooped by his own reporter, a la the Post and Woodward, and indeed might have chosen not to publish even after the book hit the shelves if his national security concerns weren't assuaged. If it isn't true, Keller's lying. Either way, it's not a real confidence builder.

Another troubling item is his acceptance of the administration's assurance that nobody familiar with the program thought it was illegal. Well, so what? It isn't really the administration's opinion that counts, it isn't as though the paper hasn't been burned, Times and Times again, by similarly weighty assurances, it isn't as though one would expect the administration to say anything else no matter what they thought about the legalities of it, and it isn't as though the administration haven't demonstrated that they think anything the president does is legal purely by virtue of him doing it. The first response to those assurances should have been, "Really? Prove it." Maybe that was the first response, but we'll never know. The additional reporting from Risen and Eric Lichtblau on Saturday suggests either that the reporters had a very incomplete picture of the program when the story was published or that they're doling the details out in portions.

If I were Bill Keller, I wouldn't want to be going online and answering questions from readers and critics either.

Tim, one possible explanation for the story remaining in the Times' bailiwick is that once the paper approached the White House for a response, the administration will have known about the leaks and done whatever they could to discourage further ones. Even if wrathful word didn't come down from the White House, Risen will probably have tipped his sources that the story was killed in response to the White House. That would have been enough to get people to pull their necks in.

Posted by: weldon berger at December 26, 2005 1:28 AM | Permalink

Its little wonder that the Kellers and Downies of the world think they can get away with "opacity" --- the people they hire as "watchdogs" seem to function more like lapdogs.

At the Times, Byron Calame apparently has a job that requires him to do little more than fax in a column every two weeks that avoids the current concerns of readers --- the Judith Miller debacle was all but over before Calame finally got around to addressing it -- and his comments were simply warmed over conventional wisdom by that time. Calame remains AWOL on the latest controversy concerning Keller and his news judgement.

Over at the Post, things are even worse. After starting the whole Froomkin debacle, Deborah Howell has gone into complete stonewall mode, and refuses to address reader concerns about her own role in the debacle, or Downie's and John Harris's willingness to channel the concerns of the RNC and the White House directly onto the pages of the Post. And, instead of addressing the whole controversy over the Post's refusal to ask about impeachment in its polls -- and the fact that the question isn't being asked because it would anger the White House, this week Howell addresses the concerns of the Heritage Foundation regarding a story on military recruitment -- and does so in an incomprehensible fashion.

With "ombudsmen" and "public editors" like these two, its "clear" that these positions that was once supposed to enhance transparency have become just "another brick in the wall" behind which people like Downie and Keller can hide.

Posted by: ami at December 26, 2005 9:13 AM | Permalink

Howell so far is a major disappointment. washingtonpst.com should hire its own ombudsman. Calame, well, I still have some hopes for him.

Media Bistro asked media observers for some predictions on what might happen in '06. Here are mine:

* The paths of The New York Times and The Washington Post will continue to diverge. (65 percent probability)
* The prestige and defensibility of "he said, she said" journalism will continue to plummet while the incidence of it will remain about the same. (80 percent)
* Local television websites will become larger players in news. (52 percent)
* The brilliant strategy of trying to beat the competition by cutting quality will remain in place in the newspaper biz, and so more newspapers will tip from black to red ink. (85 percent)
* More "traditional" journalists will catch the bug and emerge as blogging stars. (60 percent)
* More innovation will come to the news industry from players outside that industry, including Yahoo, Google, bloggers, amateurs, geeks and non-profits. (75 percent)
* Journalists—not all, but lots—will continue to let their web literacy lag and their blog ignorance grow while simultaneously assuring themselves that the Web is unreliable and bloggers can never replace them. (68 percent)

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 10:00 AM | Permalink

With all due respect to craig's list, I;m not sure I see a model for the news business there. It's one thing to loosen control on an ad for a 2-bedroom apartment in Clinton; it's another to loosen control on a story on CIA prisons.

There's a tendency to shake the head at every success in the commercial world and say: Ahhh a really smart news organization would have done THAT. Well, sometimes

What makes sense to my mind is to try and co-op the successes, whether through partnerships or mimmickry or ... . Toyota started as a low rent knockoff of the brilliant GM and Ford. And, in fairness to GM and Ford, those companies have gone through several reinventions--the death knell for that industry has been sounded several times a decade since the late 1960s. Maybe this time it's different, maybe not.

Newspapers are still vastly profitable, which is not an argument for sitting back and doing nothing. It is an argument aganst the notion that obsolescence looms (Jay, I know this isn't your argument). And, as Jay notes, it's an argument AGAINST the cannibilization that Knight Ridder is now practicing.

I'm intrigued, Jay, by your prediction that the Post and Times will continue to diverge. How so?

As for your point about web literacy, most of my friends at the Post and Times read a fair number of blogs. As annoying as Delong can be on occasion, I don't know many economics writers who don't read him (Oy, a double negative ... ). The NYTimes food section editors regularly read the food blogs and so it goes.

Whether this is true of the political reporters, I can't say. I know that in 2000 I ended up pushing for and then reporting out a long look at the Ohio election results after reading the alarms raised on the blogs. These bloggers' concerns did not all pan out. But so be it ... there's a lot to be said for ringing the bell loudly.

Also, and I know that I risk sounding like a broken record (ahhh, a true dinosaur reference ... ) but one value added that newspapers should be loathe to surrender is the reliance on old fashioned street reporting, which takes troops and perhaps more skill than one would imagine. I was struck during the recent transit strike by how often I heard bloggers -- Jarvis among them -- AND newspaper columnists and TV types, assert that the strike was a disaster for the TWU, that no one supported the strikers etc etc

Hello? I pedaled over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then to Bay Ridge and Crown Heights every single day, and I heard a very different story. There was a good deal of sympathy for the strikers, particularly from blacks and Latinos (who are not big blog readers ... ), and from many working class whites.

There is a vast gulf in this city between Manhattan and the Manhattanized sections of the outer boros and the rest -- which is to say the majority -- of the city. And I'd argue that very little of this is picked up by the "new" media. which can be a pretty insulated place. (NOW, there IS a good argument that the unions need to get hip to the web as well--a couple of good bloggers and a union ride board for the general public might have helped the TWU's cause as well ...

Anyway, enough. As always, this site raises criticial questions and it's clearly provoked me to go on at too great length ... So thanks again

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 26, 2005 12:15 PM | Permalink

weldon: ... the administration will have known about the leaks and done whatever they could to discourage further ones.

How would they do this without attracting even more attention? Why wouldn't we have heard about such previous efforts even now? Wouldn't "whatever they could" also include an investigation into the leak?

Even if wrathful word didn't come down from the White House, Risen will probably have tipped his sources that the story was killed in response to the White House. That would have been enough to get people to pull their necks in.

And yet the NYT was able "to conduct additional reporting" on the issue? How much of that additional reporting went back to the original anonymous sources? How many additional anonymous sources were obtained in that year?

And how was the NYT able to conduct this additional reporting without attracting attention to the story?

And how, within - what hours?, were other newspapers able to have their own columns with more information?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 12:57 PM | Permalink

good questions, sisyphus!

Here's another theory --- other news orgs got the story, and were asked to keep in under wraps -- and were told that the Times had the story first, and that THE New York Times was withholding it for national security reasons. The fact that THE New York Times wasn't spilling the beans would have influenced other publications to do likewise... (if for no other reason than they wouldn't want to be in the position of having the Times criticize them for ignoring national security concerns.)

*************

special to M Powell -- please continue to 'go on at length'. Your comments are consistently informative and incisive.

Posted by: ami at December 26, 2005 1:32 PM | Permalink

ami: other news orgs got the story, and were asked to keep in under wraps

Like D.C.'s local newspaper, WaPo? Which is more disconcerting for WaPo: scooped by the NYT or criticized by it?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 1:54 PM | Permalink

"Also, and I know that I risk sounding like a broken record (ahhh, a true dinosaur reference ... ) but one value added that newspapers should be loathe to surrender is the reliance on old fashioned street reporting, which takes troops and perhaps more skill than one would imagine. I was struck during the recent transit strike by how often I heard bloggers -- Jarvis among them -- AND newspaper columnists and TV types, assert that the strike was a disaster for the TWU, that no one supported the strikers etc etc

As an insider, I am sure you know the reasons behind the media's gleeful mischaracterization of public support for unions. It is not very much different from the breathless reporting about the less-than-robust season retailers are having. Big corporations have an inherent interest in marginalizing union power just as business models that depend on advertising for their revenues have an embedded self-interest in advancing the interests of the advertisers in their news reporting. There is no surprise here.

There is a more interesting dynamic that Jay failed to notice (or has not found it to be sufficiently evident to mention) in his predictions; Blog readers, fed up with the MSM's conflicts-of-interest and mutual back-scratching, have exhibited a surprising amount of willingness to financially support news-analysis and in a few cases news gathering (Digby, TPM are two recent examples). If you go through the comments of the readers on these sites, it is hard to miss the intense yearning for a media that is more objective and sceptical of officialdom. While some of this may be a result of passions currently running high, it is not difficult to spot the birth of a new subscriber-based model of journalism.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 26, 2005 2:08 PM | Permalink

Is it possible that the Times was trying to avoid being DanRathered for publishing a story so strongly unfavorable to the Administration, so close to the election?

The Rather thing has always smelled to me like a setup -- forged versions of the actual documents ... fed to a reporter with a feud with the Bushes.

After all, 60 Minutes canned its look at the runup to war for the very same reasons:

60 Minutes Scraps War Report Sept. 25, 2004

(AP) CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report on the rationale for war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake.

CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered inappropriate.

It appears that the Times was preparing to run this story at exactly the same time.

And the Administration knew it.

Is it insane to think Rather was tarred as an example to other news outlets?

Posted by: Richard B. SImon at December 26, 2005 2:19 PM | Permalink

It's a misnomer to refer to newspaper.coms and to blame newspaper newsrooms for failing to build communities. Although I'm not sure about Newsday's setup, most of these sites are not run by the newspaper, but by a separate online division, as discussed in the previous topic about The Washington Post. There's some resistance on any staff, but often it's the newspaper newsroom that's saying, "Tear down this wall."

Posted by: Brian Cubbison at December 26, 2005 2:26 PM | Permalink

ami... special to M Powell -- please continue to 'go on at length'. Your comments are consistently informative and incisive.

Yeah, the low-flab long ball is fair territory, as I'm sure Michael knows.

From my point of view, as blog publisher, it's what sort of comments create value for PressThink on the Web? The most developed often do.

Blogging is welcoming to obsessives--hounds--of all kinds, and this includes ranters and re-cyclers but also factual sticklers, people who accumulate a great deal of knowledge about a few big, important things and notice any flicker of the new, which they then blog about.

Also why journalists who are good writers and natural reporters could, will and do make great bloggers: in many ways, its an activity made for them.

On why I think the Post and the Times will diverge, a real answer takes a post. One reason is Sulzberger does not seem to have mastery of his surroundings. Gay Talese, certainly no enemy of the Times, certainly familiar with its culture, told Auletta: “You get a bad king every once in a while.”

His point was not that a bad king leads to revolution. The king stays king because the people believe in the monarchy, and so the kingdom weathers through. I don't think the Washington Post is in that situation. Graham is far more aware of his surroundings, from what I can tell. You get the sense he has a strategy, but he's also taking lessons from reality.

Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was kind of shocked by how unaware Sulzberger seemed to be on Charlie Rose. I don't think he understood the challenge before him, "where" he was. Or at least it didn't come through in his answers, reactions, and presentation of self.

Auletta's portrait only deepened my view on that.

Another reason is actually a series of observations bound into one over-simplified and hazardous one: Both newspapers are highly regarded among journalists with the experience to judge. The Post is known among your peers as more of a writer's paper, with strong editors, while the Times is more run more by the editors, and of course it employs strong writers too but keeps them more hemmed in-- at least in news coverage. So the Post is looser.

That jives with what I observe, even though it's not that simple. This has a lot of implications, but one is that it seems harder for orthodoxy to rule at the Post, and there aren't the same hang-ups about univocalism. The difference may be slight, the exceptions real, but as you know a small variance can lead to a big change in direction when plotted over time.

Those things all feed into the freer and more inventive use of the Web, although I would say the Times has made equally brilliant use of the Web. It's major innovations are not in openness, interactivity, or establishing a "writer's paper." But I would add that I don't believe there is "one" known way to succeed on the Web, or that all good ways are known. That's why I am for pluralism in the press think of the modern, with-it news organization. (I don't use the term dinosaur, by the way. Nor do I say MSM. I think both are insulting to people in your line of work.)

Put them all together--Sulzberger vs. Graham, editors vs writers, orthodoxy vs. pluralism, freer use of the Web and you get... divergent paths. That's my free hand sketch.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 2:28 PM | Permalink

The NYTimes knew about the 9-11 threat before it happened, and haven't published anything to date about that fact.

See this link: http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/5/judycode.asp

In July of 2001, Steve Engelberg, then an editor at The New York Times, looked up to see Judy Miller standing at his desk. As Engelberg recalls, Miller had just learned from a source about an intercepted communication between two Al Qaeda members who were discussing how disappointed they were that the United States had never attempted to retaliate for the bombing of the USS Cole. Not to worry, one of them said, soon they were going to do something so big that the U.S. would have to retaliate.

Posted by: ArtShu at December 26, 2005 3:27 PM | Permalink

Looseness is a good way to describe it, Jay. And it may begin to describe why Craigslist is more used, more trusted even, for speedy, reliable info on the transit strike. We're seeing this preference for looseness everywhere; Jon Stewart's success is as much about loosening up news presentation, as much as it is a critique of media.

Let me add to the Post/Times comments. As the papers diverged post-Watergate, the Post made some key business decisions to make sure it could maintain high penetration in the D.C. metro area. Though it has been seen print decreases in the last several years, like most dailies, it still has one of the highest penetrations in its market. Likewise, online, it has enjoyed one of the highest local user penetrations, staving off the local efforts of Yahoo, for instance, better than others.

Key to its relative (to other newspaper sites) success has been an ability to start to become a local site, not a local newspaper site.

Its City Guide site really helps locals and visitors enjoy the city, unlike so many other news sites hampered by mid-'90s entertainment platforms.

What I've seen lately is willingness to raise the Post flag by lowered the drawbridges to the castle.

Its Discussions page is a good effort, jumpstarting conversations by its own journalists and then enabling community comment. It is trying to provide some contextual blogging additions to Post content with its Technorati-supplied service.
And I'm impressed with Post Remix. Again, here's the attempt to get a little bit loose. When mash-ups of Craiglist and Google Maps became public, many newspaper companies scurried to figure how to protect themselves -- how to make sure nobody got at their code. Post Remix invites in mash-up artists to make more of the Post content, connecting it up with maps, quizzes and search utilities. This, too, is a right step in embracing the change, rather than keeping the bridges up.

Posted by: Ken Doctor at December 26, 2005 3:40 PM | Permalink

Point of information:

in a word, yes.

although its not insane to think that the Killian memos were a "set up", if that is what happened the target was Bill Burkett. There would have been no way that forgers could have predicted where these documents would appear first, so anyone who suggests that Rather/Mapes/CBS was the target is going off the deep end.

Posted by: ami at December 26, 2005 4:37 PM | Permalink

Jay Rosen: On why I think the Post and the Times will diverge, a real answer takes a post. ... The Post is known among your peers as more of a writer's paper, with strong editors, while the Times is more run more by the editors, and of course it employs strong writers too but keeps them more hemmed in-- at least in news coverage. So the Post is looser.

When you write that post, I would be interested in the difference between "looser", asymmetric, and symmetric; the role of writers and editors in symmetric and asymmetric (discoursive?) journalism; trust and the "triangular relationship among journalists, the Administration and the public."

Feel free to take your time. Tomorrow would be fine ;-)

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 26, 2005 4:48 PM | Permalink

I'm wondering about 4 things:

1.) Did Risen and/or Simon & Schuster have any part in holding the story?

Part of Howell Raines' big pitch to Sulzberger jr, back in the day, that helped him win the job was that he was going to encourge Times writers to publish books with Times Books imprint, and I'm sure it became implied that if they did so, the Grey Lady would help promote it -- maybe even run excerpts in the mag or the paper. I wonder if that became an idea that Risen and other writers now pursue in pitching their books to other publishers -- that the Times editors wo ould hold the story until the book was ready for publication?

2.) I don't believe Keller for a second was hoodwinked by the admin about there being national security implications. He's drunk the Kool-aid for 5 years on Bush, from his assignments during the 2000 campaign as managing to his unctuous profile of Bush as "Reagon's son" to this -- he may not be openly partisan but he does love to see the Bush admin as a sort of re-run of Camelot: can-do neo-cons with a VERY IMPORTANT mission to defend liberty ....and bien-pensant editors should show their patriotism and keep a secret.

3.) Upthread someone asked how only one reporter could have this story -- and I think this gets us back to the insidious use of anonymous sources for reasons other than protecting whiste-blowers. Journalists like to use anonymous sources because if they report, "according to White House lackey so-and-so," then every 2-bit journalist or worse, blogger, can get right on the story. But if its "anonymous administration sources," then it sounds like the writer is deep, deep inside ... and no one could possibly catch him or her.

4. Hate to ask but -- if it turns out these taps were not only wrong but demonstrably illegal (as more than lawyer has suggested already), then at what point were Risen and his editors complicit in a conspiracy or cover-up? If I, as a private citizen, knew of a crime and didn't report it to the appropriate law-enforcement authorities, I could be charged as an accomplice after the fact -- is there any reason, especially post Judy Miller, to think that this part of the law doesn't apply to those who may claim to be journalists but seem to get paid not to report information of great national importance.

Posted by: desmoulins at December 26, 2005 5:14 PM | Permalink

Tim, there appear to have been a limited number of primary sources because not very many people knew about the program. I'm taking Keller's "additional reporting" comments with a large grain of salt, since the newsroom gossip suggests reporters were firmly discouraged from pursuing the story and because the Saturday story broke significant new ground. It doesn't seem at all unlikely to me that people who leaked and were then told that the leaks were 1) known to the White House and 2) weren't going to result in a story, would decide that further leaks to other reporters just weren't a good idea.

Once the story was out there, the risks dimished considerably. The Post in particular has good intelligence community sources, as does Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, and they knew who to call and what to ask. They may even have had some of the story, but not enough of it to print until after the story broke.

It seems unlikely to me that there wasn't at least an informal investigation, but the White House would have known that referring it to the justice department/FBI would, as you note, probably result in yet more leaks; the Times knew who the leakers were and would know if they were retaliated against. "I know that you know that I know ..."

It doesn't seem all that mysterious to me.

Posted by: weldon berger at December 26, 2005 5:57 PM | Permalink

Ken: "What I've seen lately is willingness to raise the Post flag by lowered the drawbridges to the castle."

I agree. Many of your observations add to what I meant by looser. Thanks.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 6:21 PM | Permalink

Somalia. Khobar Towers. Afghan and Sudanese missile strikes. Budget and healthcare hassles with a Republican majority. Bosnia and Serbia. Mounting terrorist threats at home in Oklahoma City and abroad, like the USS Cole.

Can you imagine the furor if, like Bush, Clinton had gone to NYT or WaPo and pointedly asked them not to cover the Lewinsky story because it might undermine all the other problems on his plate, including military action abroad?

It doesn't matter whether we're discussing journalism or any other profession that serves the public, is compensated by the public. When the professional involved acts against the interests of the public, it should be disclosed, backstory, too, , from every angle, so that the public can make its own fully-informed decisions. And in the case of journalism, it is their raison d'etre -- otherwise, why have journalists at all? We might as well hire writers from the entertainment industry if journalists can't and won't report the entire story.

Posted by: Rayne at December 26, 2005 6:35 PM | Permalink

ami --

I think your observations are unfair to Calame.
In the week following the Times' long Judy Miller mea culpa, Calame posed a series of tough questions to Keller, as posted on Calame's own website. Midweek, Keller answered -- in a way that he would not respond to you or to me or to Jay -- with his now infamous "I regret this, I regret that" response, which was the first inkling that Miller was toast, and which Calame intended to use in his coming Sunday column.
The more Keller studied his e-mail to Calame, the more he liked it -- so much so that on Friday of that week, without acknowledging that it was Calame who elicited his thoughts in the first place, he "scooped" Calame by sending it out as an e-mail to the entire staff, which he knew would be leaked to the wider world in about 14 minutes.
The next day came Maureen Dowd's column. The following day came Calame's column, already rendered moot by Keller's staff memo which may never have seen light of day had Calame not demanded some answers.
As I read it, Calame backed Keller into a corner, and without that, Judy Miller might well still be on the Times payroll, and we still would not know Bill Keller's thoughts on the matter.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 26, 2005 6:53 PM | Permalink

I know this will be a stretch for some of you, but I don't believe Monica Lewinsky (unless she belonged to some terrorist organization)had national security implications. At least there's a case to be made that the wiretaps were legal and were in the interest of national security. At least that's what bipartisan and nonpartisan lawyers say.

But more interesting to me is the rush of power the leakee and leakor must feel. Both know the chances of them being held accountable in the event of another terrorist attack are slim to none. Nor is it likely they will be held accountable for clearly illegal acts (BTW, why isn't NYTimes demanding a special prosecutor investigate the Risen leak as they did Plame?).

Knowing they have changed/altered policy, acting outside the checks and balances of our system, knowing they'll never have to pay a price, must be akin to intellectual (and possibly physical) orgasm.

Posted by: Seymour Glass at December 26, 2005 7:12 PM | Permalink

Rayne, how do you know that Clinton didn't ask the press to suppress the Lewinsky story? You don't.

Remember, it was Drudge, operating outside the elite press who broke that story. Do you really believe that the MSM would admit they sat on the Lewinsky story after Drudge scooped them?

Not likely.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 26, 2005 8:19 PM | Permalink

I agree with ami that Calame is a disappointment. I wasn't all that impressed with Okrent, but he is head and shoulders above Calame.

My theory is that Calame, a man who has spent his entire life with newspapers, doesn't have the intellectual distance required to be a real "public" representative. He instinctively sides with the press rather than the public.

Okrent, on the other hand, was not of journalism, though he had publishing experience. Hence he was able to more easily identify with the public rather than the press.

Posted by: Dave Clark at December 26, 2005 8:43 PM | Permalink

"Okrent, on the other hand, was not of journalism ..."

Are you kidding? Okrent is a talented and multi-faceted guy, but he was, and is, entirely a creature of journalism.
His resume' reads thusly:

-- Stringer for the New York Times.
-- Writer for Texas Monthly.
-- Founder and editor of New England magazine.
-- Brief stint as an editor at Knopf.
-- Columnist at Esquire.
-- Assistant managing editor, then managing editor, of Life.
-- Head of the online operations at Time Inc.
-- Editor-at-large at Time Inc.
-- Public editor of the Times.
Except for a few uncomfortable months as a book editor at Knopf, he has spent his entire adult life in magazine or newspaper journalism.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 26, 2005 9:25 PM | Permalink

Both Okrent and Calme are in no-win situations. In many cases they do can also be co-opted by legal situations. I believe the Thornburgh investigation of CBS labored under the same problem.

I am not convinced that either Okrent or Calme have been given the freedom we would like to see. They cannot because they work for the newspaper.

Posted by: Tim at December 26, 2005 9:27 PM | Permalink

Lovelady: Being lazy, I said "journalism" when I should have said "newspapers". No dispute here about Okrent's talent and credentials though.

Posted by: Dave Clark at December 26, 2005 9:59 PM | Permalink

Steve, first off, I don't consider the fact that Judy Miller lost her job an "accomplishment" that Calame should be given "credit" for. She'd been playing fast and loose with the Times standards and practices for years -- and should have been reigned in (or fired) long ago.

Secondly, my criticism of Calame re: the Miller affair was directed at its "timeliness"; the fact that there were serious problems with Miller was evident for a very long time; Calame remained silent on the issue until even Keller and Pinch realized that the situation was untenable.

We don't need a Byron Calame to point out that the Emperor has no clothes when everyone is already aware of his nakedness. The ombudsman's job shouldn't be do to post-mortems, but to ask questions and get answers when a diagnosis can still help the patient.

Posted by: ami at December 26, 2005 10:58 PM | Permalink

Many interesting points by different authors. Responding to a few...

I think there is a thrill factor for both the leaker and the leakee-- or publisher of the leak. It has to do with throwing a wrench in, causing a shift in the arena with your revelations, and making people react to what you've done by "exposing" the truth. There's some pleasure just in seeing the scrurry after the story. But if those are factors they stand aside other motivations equally real.

Okrent is a journalist, yes, and "formed" by the profession, but to me he was one of Keller's more interesting choices because he primarily saw himself as a writer, and the public editor's job as a writing opportunity. This is not Calame's approach. His strengths are as an editor. So they are going to take different paths in the job.

As far as I know, Calame has never published any results of his inquiries into Miller's clearances. If he did learn anything definitive we do not know about it.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 26, 2005 11:50 PM | Permalink

Betsy Newmark of Betsy's Page--pro-Bush, civics teacher in NC, blogger, on my "recommended" list on the left column--has written a rather interesting post on the Eichenwald story and the kinds of ethics questions journalists tend to raise. Some excerpts:

As I think more about this question, it makes me ponder the motivations of those who adopt journalism for a career. Time and again, I have heard reporters say that they first decided to go into journalism because they wanted to make the world a better place. I've always thought that this explains their adversarial attitude towards the government in specific, but their more general reliance on the government to solve the problems that they hope to expose.

...if you got into the business to make the world a better place, how do you match that attitude up with noninterference when it comes to being in a situation where your personal intervention may help an individual?

And if noninvolvement in a story is essential, what about when the journalist's reporting on a story will entail changing the course of the story? When Dana Priest reported on how we were holding terrorists in secret prisons abroad, her article changed the story and served as a catalyst for a series of events that probably would never have happened without her story.

Lovelady (whose newspaper won a lot of Pulitzers when he was managing editor) can correct me if I am wrong, but serving as a catalyst for a series of events can be the kind of evidence--showing the story's "impact"--that gets submitted to the Pulitzer jury along with the big investigative article.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 12:54 AM | Permalink

Betsy's right. I think Jack Shafer raised interesting points about Eichenwald's journalistic "sins" but that he's a little too hard on him. He asks a lot of questions but a question I would ask Shafer is would he still write the same column if the boy from the story had been a minor when Eichenwald intervened (but when you're talking about a kid who lost his innocence then how can you even assign a number to his age).

But regardless of how you weigh Eichenwald's actions he deserves tremendous credit for not just ignoring the criticism and helping provide "back story."

Anyway...I'm biased cause Eichenwald's article tore me to pieces and in my opinon at least in this case the end justified the means.

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 27, 2005 5:21 AM | Permalink

Ron Brynaert sticks up for Howard Kurtz against the left. I agree with Ron: I have never understood why some on the left treat Kurtz as right-leaning or a neocon.

I just re-read Deborah Howell's latest ombud column, after scanning it the first time. Man, it is weak. She manages to do a he said, she said as ombudsman and come out with a "bottom line" that goes nowhere: "Look for the widest context." Does anyone know what that means?

A year of this--or is it two?--is going to be tough.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 10:41 AM | Permalink

Jay -- are you kidding about Kurtz? His wife is a paid political operative for the GOP and only last year there were serious allegations, never taken up by the Post or anyone else (at least publicly), that he gave favorable treatment to his wife's clients. Even leaving aside the prospect that he never explicitly promised favorable treatment to his wife's clients, its an an absolute scandal of journalistic ethics that he has never disclosed this conflict of interest: his family benefits from or is hurt directly by his own political coverage. If you can't see the problem there, whats the point of writing about journalistic ethics?

Posted by: desmoulins at December 27, 2005 10:48 AM | Permalink

aside....

Michael Froomkin announces the arrival of a new nephew

congrats, Dan!

re: Kurtz --- my take is that Kurtz has a tendency to cast all criticism of Bush as partisan/ideological in nature. Exhibit A is his recent piece which presented the criticism of the NSA's domestic spying as something that is only of concern to "liberals."

Of course, Kurtz is not the only one who does this --- most of the media still seems to think that we are living in December 2002, and doesn't seem to realize that opposition to Bush and his policies is now mainstream, and those who "strongly support" Bush are an increasingly small "fringe" group.

Posted by: ami at December 27, 2005 11:21 AM | Permalink

You're right, Jay.

Pulitzer jurors and the Pulitzer board take "impact" into account when judging a nominated story. Particularly in the public service category, it's to your advantage if your story influenced the subsequent course of events.

The thinking often--though not always--seems to be, "If there's no impact, then where is the public service?"

I never bought it myself--informing readers alone is a public service, for my money--but, then, I never served a term on the Pulitzer board either.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 27, 2005 12:32 PM | Permalink

So then journalists should remain uninvolved but it's good if their stories influence the subsequent course of events.

Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times thinks we're all paranoid and ungrateful for wanting more transparency from Keller and crew. Excerpts:

It's hard to recall a moment in recent history when as many serious news organizations have done quite as timely and probing a job of reporting on national security and intelligence issues...
It says more about the national climate than it does the New York Times' journalism that the paper immediately was assailed from the left and the right...

Left-wing critics since have alleged that the story was held so as not to imperil Bush's reelection and that it was published now only because Risen's book on the administration and the CIA, which is forthcoming next month, contains much of this material. (It's worth noting that a Republican congressman from Texas, John Cornyn, saw this same sequence as evidence that the Times timed publication to hype Risen's book. There's that bipartisan paranoia again.)

... The New York Times deserves thanks and admiration for the service it has done the nation. Instead, it's getting bipartisan abuse and another round of endless demands for explanations and "transparency." (In case you haven't noticed, "transparency" is this year's "closure.")

While paranoid left wing critics are referenced and ridiculed throughout the column, none are named, or quoted. I guess like junebugs in June there are too many, so how could you pick out one? (The righties get names.)

While the demands for explanation are held to be a ridiculous excess among clueless partisans, Rutten doesn't mention Alex Jones (ex-NYT), Bill Kovach (ex-NYT), and Tom Kunkel (ex-Miami Herald) who all thought the Times should give readers a better explanation for what went on with the wiretap story.

He would have had an interesting column if he included them, but harder to write-- and to sneer.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 1:56 PM | Permalink

With his usual precision, Jay has put his finger on the paradox. Reporters and editors at their most pious like to say, "We just print the stories; the outcomes are not only out of our control, they are of no concern to us."

This, from a group of people who are fond of saying they went into the field in order "to make a difference," and whose highest honor -- the Pulitzer -- is reserved for those whose journalism demonstrably influences outcomes.

This pretense is an utter crock.

Back when I was doing journalism (instead of doing criticism of journalism), whenever I pointed out this contradiction, whether to those who worked for me or to those for whom I worked, the observation was met by an uncomfortable silence, followed by an abrupt change in the subject.

Don't get me wrong; in the greater scheme of things, I don't think this is a big deal; I think it's just one more silly construct that old-school journalists have erected to avoid the self-evident: they care a great deal about whether their work has an effect and they go to great lengths to present it so that it will.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 27, 2005 2:28 PM | Permalink

There's only one significant hole that I can see in these discussions: How much of this is lawyer-inspired?

Lawyers don't like transparency, and you can bet that this story (and stories like it) weren't just edited, they were lawyered. The natural tendency of all lawyers is to advise their clients to play things close to the vest, because that's fewer variables they'll have to cover leading up to a trial, or prepping someone for the witness stand.

Opening the in-house debates (who am i kidding? they're usually fights, not debates) to public scruitiny means opposing lawyers can go digging into all sorts of unrelated crap in discovery. My guess is the lawyers for big newspapers will see transparency as the unwanted nose of an unwanted camel poking around the bottom of their big tent.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 27, 2005 3:20 PM | Permalink

Add John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder, Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, Jack Germond, ex-Baltimore Sun-- they all think the meetings with Bush and the NYT, WP should have been reported.

Rutten wants it easy; he prefers to argue with nameless, quote-less left-wing paranoids, rather than responsible people in his own profession demanding more transparency. He calls it an "endless" demand, instead of reflecting on the actual demands observers are making.

And CJR Daily weighs in: "Bush's intervention to try to stop newspaper stories in the works is not just a 'back story.' To the contrary, a case can be made that it is the real story. In both instances, it is clear, even just from the surface evidence, that the White House had a part in dissuading the editors from, in the Post's case, running a crucial piece of the story, and in the Times' case, from running the story at all for more than a year."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 3:25 PM | Permalink

check out digby's critque of Deborah Howell's lastest column. I think Digby correctly identifies just one of the major problems with Howell's column is that she doesn't say WHO is complaining about the Pentagon-recruitment story. Was it the Pentagon who then pointed her to the Heritage Foundation's numbers? Howell isn't going to say.

Posted by: catrina at December 27, 2005 3:55 PM | Permalink

Rutten: "...how could a bunch of editors keep a secret in a building filled with professional snoops and irrepressible gossips, which is what a newspaper is?"

I dunno...how did Karl Rove being a source for Matt Cooper remain a secret for over a year?

Ami,

Kurtz didn't present "the criticism of the NSA's domestic spying as something that is only of concern to "liberals." That's only how it was characterized on some blogs.

In fact last week Kurtz wrote completely the opposite of that:

"I'm not saying that everyone who expressed outrage over the National Security Agency's no-warrant spying is a Bush-basher or that everyone who has questioned the Times's decision to run with the story (or walk with the story, since it was delayed by a year) is a Bush-loving media hater. After all, some Republicans are criticizing the surveillance and demanding hearings, though none has gone anywhere near as far as Howard Dean in comparing Bush to Nixon."

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 27, 2005 4:08 PM | Permalink

Steve, first off, I don't consider the fact that Judy Miller lost her job an "accomplishment" that Calame should be given "credit" for. She'd been playing fast and loose with the Times standards and practices for years -- and should have been reigned in (or fired) long ago. (Emphasis added.)
-- ami

I rest my case.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 27, 2005 4:53 PM | Permalink

Steve is saying: the editors knew that you were right, ami. Miller should have been let go before any of this. Calame forced their hand.

But I think Dowd did too.

Sifting through this thread makes me believe we will eventually see news organizations built for the transparency era, who don't see it as a "burden" or "noisy demand," or a cave-in to paranoids, but rather an aspect of their strength and truthfulness from the word go, part of the franchise.

An alert reader reminds me that I should correct myself in foolishing assuming Washington Monthly was competent when it said Kos had 3.7 million readers. Kos says 500,000 a week is more like it. Ron: do you have an estimate? And the Post's traffic as stated in Deb Howell's column is 8 million a month not a week, like I said. Maybe, in the roughest terms, the ratio is closer to 1 to 4, Kos to Post, as against 1 to 2.5.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 27, 2005 5:12 PM | Permalink

Beyond 3.7M, there were more problems with that Washington Monthly story, including Kos' *relationship* with Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid

Five factual errors in the first 4 graphs. Embarraskind!
One of my old editors was fond of saying, "it goes to wrap fish the next day."

i thought this character assassination through your spouse is a righty thing. attacking kurtz through his wife, bashing Andrea Mitchell because she's married Greenie ...

Posted by: bush's jaw at December 27, 2005 6:12 PM | Permalink

Ron, check Kurtz's Dec. 26 column, when he claims that its "liberals" that think it was wrong for the Times to have withheld the story for over a year.

Then look at Kurtz citation in the piece you cited of a Weekly Standard article which states unequivocally that ""As the New York Times undoubtedly discovered during its research, the NSA probably never broke the law at all, and certainly nothing uncovered in their article indicates any evidence that they did."

Now, if you actually read the Times piece, you will find that Morissey (the Standard writer) is flat out lying --- that the Times uncovered considerable evidence that "the law was broken"....and the main reason the piece received the attention it did was because of the evidence presented by the Times that both the general provisions of the 4th Amendment and the specific statutory provisions of the FISA law were violated.

So why is Kurtz featuring right-wing "analysis" that goes beyond spin into flat out lies?

This is hackery at its worst -- and yet I don't expect to see Deborah Howell going on a Jeremiad against Kurtz's obviously partisan/ideological agenda here.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not convinced that Kurtz's motives are ideological -- the impression I get when reading his column is that he's just lazy, and formulating his critiques based on "liberal vs 'patriotic supporter of Bush'" is simply a reflection of his unwillingness or incapacity to look deeply into the issues he writes about, and determine whether the concerns he perceives as coming from "liberals" are things that should concern all Americans.

Posted by: ami at December 27, 2005 6:37 PM | Permalink

Kurtz' response to that Weekly Standard rant (same article):

"Um, if it's such a non-big-deal, why have five senators, including two Republicans, demanded hearings?"

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 27, 2005 6:42 PM | Permalink

I find Kurtz to be pretty fair -- and I've never detected much in the way of party-bias there. He could be righter than left, but that doesn't make him wrong.

He covers the coverage. Should he ignore the Weekly Standard because it's inaccurate? I think it's pretty darned important to show everything everyone is saying. Do you tune out Fox News because it's propaganda? Or do you watch it to see what the daily party line is and watch how the talking points percolate?

The whole point of link-heavy media blogs, to my understanding, is "Here's what people are writing today and here's some context -- now go read it for yourself."

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 27, 2005 7:03 PM | Permalink

Kurtz' response to that Weekly Standard rant (same article): "Um, if it's such a non-big-deal, why have five senators, including two Republicans, demanded hearings?"

which, of course, does NOT address the point I made --- that the Morrissey piece contained a deliberate and easily detectable falsehood as its premise, which Kurtz simply ignored. (Kurtz used a long quote from the Standard piece, and his response seemed directed at the latter part of the rant. Had Kurtz said "if there was no illegality, why are five senators..." you would have a point here Ron.)

Posted by: ami at December 27, 2005 7:20 PM | Permalink

I don't know...the one line by Kurtz - to me - effectively dismisses the Weekly Standard article by proving that it is a big deal (hell it's even close to blogger snark with the "um"). Like I wrote at my blog...it seems to me the real issue with Kurtz is that he just doesn't go as far to the left as desired by some.

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at December 27, 2005 7:31 PM | Permalink

Kurtz and Froomkin basically do the same thing, linking to other media stories on political issues of the day. i know there are subtle differences, howie does criticism and occasionally does original reporting. dan has attitude, howie is more he said, she said.

in the crankosphere, one of a hero, the other a goat. attention WaPo readers, bring your own bias!

Posted by: bush's jaw at December 27, 2005 7:35 PM | Permalink

I don't know how much credit I can take for Deborah Howell's Dec. 25 column, but I've been blogging about the ridiculous story on military recruiting by Ann Scott Tyson since it came out Nov. 4. Did I write to Howell too? You bet--but only after one of my readers let me know he'd pinged Howell about the story.

Blogging is light for me around Christmastime but I wrote about this today.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 27, 2005 8:35 PM | Permalink

There's lots of things I will link to that have whoppers--false arguments, demagoging reasoning, inflammation of the facts--in them, but I would rather have readers see, and sort, for themselves. You could say I simply ignored these, or you could say I left the noticing to users who are quite competent at spotting such.

Sometimes I comment, sometimes I don't. Sometimes the excerpt is the most important thing said, sometimes the juiciest. If the critic or compiler links to the evidence, I don't think it's very meaningful to blast him for what he leaves out.

There's a pretty fundamental difference between "take my word for it" commentary--which is part of trust-me journalism--and "don't take my word for it, see for yourself" commentary, which is more trust-you than trust-me, and which is of course enabled by linking.

I think it's fascinating that the Los Angeles Times editors and Rutten himself allow Rutten to rant about the dim-headedness of left-wing paranoids without naming, quoting or, in the Web version, linking to one, a pretty low standard of argumentation in my book.

And speaking of linking, I found this post from Belmont Club, Who is a Journalist? a fascinating read. (As are many others at that high-standard-of-argumentation blog.) It's about reactions in the crankosphere to this Washington Post column telling of military-blogger Bill Roggio's trip to Iraq. Among other observations is: "Legitimacy is rooted within a journalistic piece itself; it is not an added on at an editorial desk in a famous building."

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

Sisyphus --

Help me out here.
What's your point ?
Since the effort to discredit Tyson is an elaborate one, and a coordinated one, as your various citations amply demonstrate, the question arises:
If Tyson is wrong, and rural folk are not drawn to the militatry, why is that a good thing ? Is it a "Nossir, Sarge, don't want too many hillbillies on those front lines !" kind of thing ?
Or is the point that it is not hillbillies but rather young men and women from large cities who are drawn to the military service ? And if they are, why is that a good thing ? Is it a "We're set, Sarge, the entire platoon is former gang leaders from Chicago, L.A., and New York!" kind of thing ?
Either way -- urban, rural or whatever -- what we're discussing here strikes me as a mildly interesting factoid. No more, no less.
What baffles me is why, first Tyson, then Howell, and now you, are all trying to turn it into a issue of major import.
Obviously, there is a subtext here that I am missing.
In the interests of transparency, tell me what it is.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 27, 2005 11:29 PM | Permalink

sisyphus....

The Tyson article was an accurate and sympathetic portrayal of what is going on with Army recruitment. The lower-middle class are being targeted by recruiters, who are exploiting their lack of genuine economic opportunity to encourage them to sign up. There is a military recruitment crisis -- and on the whole Tyson was explaining that crisis accurately.

Tyson even notes that there is an increased percentage of "upper income" types entering the service --- and she allowed the truth about this "increased percentage" to be spun as if it represented some sort of "patriotism" based enlistment.

The reality is far different -- the increased percentage of higher income recruits does not represent a numerical gain in the number of higher income recruits, but is merely a reflection that lower income people are more reluctant to sign up than they were prior to 2001. Before that year, joining the armed forces meant that you wouldn't wind up being deployed overseas in "optional" wars repeatedly -- the military was a low-risk/high benefit proposition for those who lacked economic options.

Falling recruitment rates were a reflection of the change in the risk/benefit equation -- and the shortfall in recruits was because those who once saw the military as a low-risk means of economic advancement suddenly were confronted with a military career that represented a much higher risk.

To give some idea of what a complete idiot Howell is, she wrote this....

In particular, the Pentagon said the NPP considered "the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting." Though those counties produced an above-average number of recruits, the counties "account for a minuscule number and proportion of total recruits . . . 275 out of 180,000 recruits (less than 0.2 percent). One would be hard-pressed to conclude much about income levels from such a small sample size."
Rand Corp.'s Orvis said, "You just can't look at the top 20 or the bottom 20. You have to look at the entire distribution."

One problem....NPP's analysis was, in fact, based on all the data, and not just those 20 counties as both the Pentagon and Rand Corp want you to believe. NPP cited the 20 county data as evidence of how the overall analysis played out --- but their analysis was based on NATIONAL data.

Now, why would Deborah Howell allow a complete and absolute falsehood promulgated by Pentagon PR flacks and its subcontractors at Rand Corporation to be cited as "factual"? Is she a moron, or an ideologue? Or both? I don't know the answer--- all I know is that she sucks as an ombudsman, and is an embarrassment to the Post.

Posted by: ami at December 27, 2005 11:37 PM | Permalink

Lets us release some of the bounds (as in bounded rationality) that constrain many of the comments here. Truth and objectivity (two important journalistic ideals) do not benefit from the loosening (sometimes simply made up) of definitions of terms like liberal/conservative etc. Perhaps one interesting perspective would be to view the events through the eyes of an ordinary Iraqi. Let us call this guy Mustapha. Mustapha is an educated (not in the US or Britain, but say, in one of the reputable institutions in Iraq itself) moderate, middle-class, well-meaning, middle-aged muslim. Mustapha does not subscribe to any fundamentalist notions of religion and exhibits 'normal' enlightened self-interst, and is in many ways similar to the typical 'baby boomer'.

If good journalism is universal, is blind to borders and nationalities, then Mustapha's perspective on any given story could be one (amonst some others) important indicator of whether a given piece is objective or not (admittedly a subjective interpretation of objectivity!).

How well would the definitions of liberal / conservative, hawkish / Dovish, acts of aggression / defence, free thinking / orthodox, liberating / oppressive (as the terms are often used by journalists and critics in these forums) sit with Mustapha's viewpoint. If Mustapha finds substantive incongruity, then would it be fair to ask if the reporters and editors have adopted, consciously or unconsciously, a degree of orwellian double-speak, even though this would seem to go against the basic grain of their craft?

Posted by: villageidiot at December 27, 2005 11:55 PM | Permalink

Tim: I still say that "...Look for the widest context. Ask as many experts as possible what the numbers mean..." is meaningless mush. And after reading your post I don't get what it is disingenuous about saying so.

If good journalism is universal, is blind to borders and nationalities...

While there may be certain things about doing it that don't vary much from country to country, I don't think journalism as a rule is "universal" or blind to national origin. PressThink, Each Nation its Own Press.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 28, 2005 12:05 AM | Permalink

Jay, which is better--Tyson's story, which relies on one dataset provided by a group falsely described as nonpartisan, or Howell's column?

Which is better reported?

If you had to rely on only one, which would leave you better informed?

I'm not sure that coming to a final authoritative decision about military recruiting data is the ombudsman's obligation. I think Howell's point, ably made, is that Tyson did an inadequate job of reporting that story.

Howell:

My bottom line on polls and surveys, no matter what kind: Look for the widest context. Ask as many experts as possible what the numbers mean....

I'll gladly take a couple more years of that. It might not be the finish line but it's a great place to start--and Tyson didn't even make it that far.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 28, 2005 12:19 AM | Permalink

Steve Lovelady:

Hillbillies and gang members? Too funny. No, no subtext consisting of hillbillies and gang members.

What baffles me is why, first Tyson, then Howell, and now you, are all trying to turn it into a issue of major import.

The "it" being, who's more drawn to the military? And why?

I don't know why "it" made frontpage news on WaPo or why Howell wrote about Tyson's article. I was inspired by Jay's comment above. I don't know why Jay thought it was important.

Obviously, there is a subtext here that I am missing.
In the interests of transparency, tell me what it is.

Well, it's not an effort to discredit Tyson or be a part of "an elaborate one, and a coordinated one". Unless, of course, you mean to imply that Jay coordinated it with his comment/question.

What I was aiming for was a plea for what Jay describes:

Those "various citations" was my attempt to practice what I was pleading for.

Jay Rosen:

And after reading your post I don't get what it is disingenuous about saying so.

Maybe I don't understand what context means, or don't understand what you mean. I'm thinking about context in the terms that Andy Cline described it. So it makes sense to me to seek a wider context.

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 28, 2005 12:29 AM | Permalink

I'm not sure that coming to a final authoritative decision about military recruiting data is the ombudsman's obligation.

Where did "final authoritative decision" come from? (Nowhere) Who asked for it? (No one.)

I'll go with what Tim wrote, "Howell's column was a he said/she said mush. She should have been much clearer, and fiercer, in her criticism of Tyson's article."

What I think is important is that the Post may have selected an ombudsman with superb experience in journalism and very little insight into how to write about it, and very little energy for debate. It's too early to judge, but the signs are not good.

"Look for the widest context" is meaningless mush because whatever context you pick as "wide" I can find a wider one that could plausibly apply depending on what you are trying to establish, or where you are going with your analysis.

Look at recruiting patterns historically? That's context. Just go back further and... bingo: wider context. Why not compare recruiting across countries? That's wider. Wait: isn't the context the transformation from a manufacturing economy to an information age one? No, the context is the rising number of educated Americans who have lately been drawn to the military. Context may sound like it means something. It's more like motherhood and apple pie in the realm of concepts; who could ever be against more context?

Meanwhile, Powerline demagogues it.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 28, 2005 1:29 AM | Permalink

Steve, while I think you're right on on the timing of the Keller memo, I don't think its release rendered Calame's column moot -- not everybody reads Romenesko, of course, and the audience for those questions is a lot larger than the Times newsroom.

(My mother, however, now reads Romenesko, because she loves newsroom gossip. I print it out for her before her arrival to our weekly get-togethers).

Posted by: Lisa Williams at December 28, 2005 5:16 AM | Permalink

I think Howell's point, ably made, is that Tyson did an inadequate job of reporting that story.

And no one who actually reads the Tyson story with an unbiased perspective would agree with you.

Tyson wrote a story about what was happening TODAY in military recruiting with a special emphasis on the Army --- a story about WHO was being targeted by the military, and what the military was doing to meet its recruitment goals with that group.

She did a perfectly fine job of reporting that story, including providing the necessary context using data analyses from a "liberal" group.

The kind of information that the wingnuts seem to want to have been included in the piece was not relevant to the subject of the article.

They wanted the political affiliation of the NPP and the fact that the analysis cited was the first of its kind done by that organization included in the article---but the only real question is whether the analysis was reliable, and the answer is "yes". (And Tyson even noted that the "zip code" analysis done by the NPP offered only an "approximation" of the situation.) Its clear that the wingnuts wanted to raise questions about a perfectly valid data analysis by branding it "liberal" -- in other words, they want to impose their ideology on the reporting.

They wanted more information about "percentage" trends --- despite the fact that Tyson included a great deal of such information in her piece, including the fact that there was a higher percentage of upper income recruits, and lower percentages of blacks and women. This is information that was relevant to the story she was writing -- the story about who was being targeted for recruitment. What the wingnuts wanted to include was not relevant to the story.

Bottom line is that the wingnuts didn't want Tyson to tell the story at all --- what they want is pure Pentagon spin about how there is no recruitment crisis. But just because a journalist reports facts that you don't like doesn't mean that there is a problem with the reporting -- and there is really no substance to the criticism of Tyson's reporting that is not driven purely by the wingnut ideological agenda.

Posted by: ami at December 28, 2005 9:19 AM | Permalink

Jay: Where did "final authoritative decision" come from? (Nowhere) Who asked for it? (No one.)

Really? No, not really.

Digby assaults Howell for a he-said she-said column:

Unfortunately for Howell, her "clarification" only leads to a muddy, unfathomable mess. After reading her further reporting, you have absolutely no idea what the truth is....What I would like to know is whether or not the military is recruiting more from lower income and rural areas and if so, why?

This is the crux of the matter with Tyson's story--did she accurately and fairly describe what's going on, or not?

And you still haven't answered a key question: If you had to rely on only one report about military recruiting, which would it be?

And another one: You teach journalism. Which is better reported?

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 28, 2005 10:52 AM | Permalink

I don't rely on one report for things-- 'tis a bad practice. Don't you agree? That said, I didn't think Tyson's report was very thorough reporting, and I didn't think Howell's column was very good ombudsmanship.

But I understand: she tweaked a reporter whom you think displayed liberal bias, so by definition it's a good column and has to be defended. I don't mind this, Chris; I also don't learn a thing from it.

When I said who asked for a "final authoritative decision," I meant since when is that a reasonable expectation for a 1,000 word column or news story? It's just a silly way of arguing. If I don't want mushy he said, she said journalism, well than I must want "final authoritative decisions" from journalists. Silly.

Digby is right: "After reading her further reporting, you have absolutely no idea what the truth is."

Returning to "I’m Not Going to Talk About the Back Story..." I received a phone call from a Times reporter who sometimes calls me when I write about the Times to correct things or add perspective an outsider would not have. I asked if there was anything "off" about this post (in the facts or the criticism) and the answer was: "not that I could see." I don't claim that means a lot, but it's a small sign that the "don't explain, it only encourages them" policy isn't appreciated inside the paper.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 28, 2005 11:23 AM | Permalink

Jay Rosen: Context may sound like it means something. It's more like motherhood and apple pie in the realm of concepts; ...

That's good. I like that. And yet, context is a term repeatedly used in the "theory of journalism".

... who could ever be against more context?

Good rhetorical question. Know anyone?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 28, 2005 1:05 PM | Permalink

Well now Jack Shafer has tried to paint an alternative view of Bill Keller's motives in holding the story http://www.slate.com/id/2133356/

While he still is somewhat...i would say disappointed, that Keller and the Times can't be more open about how long they held the story and why, Shafer basically tries to get into the Times' editors heads and give them a potential reasons.

Its not a bad exercise, but it seems to strecht a little too far to make Keller's actions seem reasonable based on the evidence. While I think few people (especially bloggers) understand what its really like to have a person of power angry at you and how to hold your ground, I can only imagine how much more difficult that must when its the President of the United States and he's telling you, *personally* that if you publish this story lives will be lost. Innocent lives because you helped terrorists get away (or something like that). Its easy enough from thousands of miles away (and many months removed) for an outsider to say "wasn't it obvious the President was lying/eggerating because he didn't want an embarrassing story published?" but its not always so *obvious* when your the person staring down people who have excess to greater intelligence than you. I will say this incident does make me appreciate the New York Times former courage in going against Nixon in publishing the Pentagon Papers because I can only imagine how similar the situation really was.

But I think, while Shafer does a credible job of potentially giving Keller a motivation I think he misses a bigger one for not being transperant now. Embarrassment. How would it look to the Times' readers if Keller admitted that he/they believed Bush's statements back in 2004, but after both time and more reporting they didn't believe them *quite* so much. It might seem an embarassment to be snowed like that and perhaps that's part of the reason for a lack of transperancy now. They just don't want to admit they were conned and that in the conning, it might have effected the outcome of the election.

Posted by: catrina at December 28, 2005 1:19 PM | Permalink

Unfortunately, journalists and the organizations they represent are beyond "embarrassment".

The "reporting" on Katrina was more than an "embarrassment", it was mostly flat-out wrong. You think the Times was "embarrassed" to be fooled by POTUS? How about being fooled by a two-bit NO politician like Mayor Nagin? The press was "fooled" by such "reliable" sources as RFK, Jr. for information regarding the cause of hurricanes, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for information on race, hysterical government officials, like Nagin and Blanco, as to who was to "blame" and for reports on baby raping, cannibalism, shots at rescue helicopters and personel and other unfounded rumours that went straight from the mouth of the "source" to TV screens, magazines and newspapers.

When the dust (mud?) settled, almost all of the breathless reporting was found to be lies. But no matter----Katrina will be "The Story of the Year" in all journalist circles, while all the falsehoods will be quietly flushed down the memory hole.

For more lack of journalistic "embarrassment" harken back to Eason Jourdon, who proudly announced to the world that CNN suppressed unpleasant information about Saddam BEFORE the invasion in order to maintain "access". I could go on and on, but why bother? Everyone here knows the sad litany of journalistic hubris and incompetence, and the reinforcement of the master narrative, at all costs, no matter the facts.

I really don't believe it is possible to "embarrass" journalists.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 2:37 PM | Permalink

Seymour Glass -- there is NO case to be made that the wiretaps were legal. If there was, the administration could have filed with the FISA Court at any time following the commencement of the taps even if the taps were outside the 72 hour window, simply taken lumps for late filing. They didn't file for a pointed and specific reason. They didn't change the FISA Court laws even thought they've had control of Congress for years, for a specific reason. The reason: the taps were clearly illegal and no timely or late filing with FISA, nor any change to the FISA laws could remedy the degree of illegality involved. I recommend reading the case, Youngstown Steel v. Sawyer; this isn't the first time a president has tried taking citizens' personal property under the aegis of national security, whether a steel plant or electronic communications isn't relevant.

The point I made about Lewinsky was the "wag the dog" argument'; Republicans blamed all military action on attempts by Clinton to lead them off the trail of any personal wrong doing by Clinton, "wagging the dog". This administration wrongs not a member of his family and then lies about it, but wrongs entire classes and nations, insisting it's his right to do so, and yet we have Republicans excusing this administration by way of the 9/11 mantra. Who's "wagging the dog" now? And what exactly are they wagging it about? Consider the Padilla case; if changing the charges against Padilla, recognizing him as a US citizen and putting the entire domestic spying operation up for criticism and scrutiny is the most defensible position the adminsitration could adopt, what was the position the administration determined it couldn't defend? This domestic spying is only the tip of a massive iceberg and the administration knows it can't defend what's below the surface.

Abigail Beecher -- given the overwhelming percentage of media ownership by Republican supporters or operatives and the media feeding frenzy over prurient presidential behavior, I find it highly unlikely that any story about Clinton asking for suppression of the Lewinsky story wouldn't have gotten milked to the hilt already. I'm sure if that story was in their grasp right now they'd whip it out and use it; they've already played the "Clinton Did It" gambit on everything else. I don't have any proof. But neither do you, and the 5+ year absence of a published story speaks volumes.

Posted by: Rayne at December 28, 2005 3:02 PM | Permalink

IIRC, Newsweek spiked the Lewinsky story, for what they said was an internal decision on its newsworthiness (or lack of it). Drudge then found out about the story and published.

It's conceivable that Clinton asked Newsweek's editor not to publish and that that influenced the decision not to. If it was just a one-on-one conversation, we might never find out about it. But this is just speculation.

Posted by: Brian O'Connell at December 28, 2005 3:23 PM | Permalink

Abigail Beecher
Freddy Cannon
Written by Richard Heard and Robert Boulanger

Peaked at # 16 in 1964

Hey, everybody get out of the street now
I hear the roar of an XKE now
Sloppy sweater and pony tail
And the cop on the corner is turnin' pale
Whoo! It's Abigail Beecher, our history teacher

All the kids are just crazy about her
Central High would be a drag without her
She knows her history from A to Z
She digs the monkey and the Watusi
Whoo! It's Abigail Beecher, our history teacher

Whoo!

We're out in the hall and a-changin' classes
Plays guitar, wears blue sunglasses
She's prim and proper and a real swinger
She's gonna be a rock-and-roll singer
Whoo! It's Abigail Beecher, our history teacher

History class is getting' bigger and bigger
They come from miles `cause they really dig her
The P.T.A. was real sore
When she walked in with a red surf board
Whoo! It's Abigail Beecher, our history teacher

C'mon, girl
Aw, you're too much!
Whoo!
C'mon, girl
Whoo!

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 28, 2005 3:45 PM | Permalink

Been doing a little googling, have you O'Connell? No matter. Too many people on this board believe history began in 2001. I hope to dispel that notion.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 3:56 PM | Permalink

To Rayne and all other history deniers: Take a stroll through your local book store (you do read, right?) and you'll find a book, in major remainderland, about how the sainted Abraham Lincoln sought to suppress and kill the "free" press. Don't even ask about habeas corpus.

Get a clue, history didn't begin with George Bush---or Bill Clinton, for that matter.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 4:35 PM | Permalink

Excuse me for interrupting this bizarre tangent ... but how (and why) did we get from Bill Keller to Bill Clinton, Freddy Cannon and Abraham LIncoln ??
I think I missed the transitional paragraph ...

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 28, 2005 5:14 PM | Permalink

Steve, I think it happened just after the major news media in this country got simply EVERYTHING wrong about Hurricane Katrina and, therefore, can't be embarrassed. Or something like that.

The media get many things wrong and, all too often, do things wrongly. And much about the Katrina coverage could have been better.

But to cite as evidence of a bad and corrupt media because reporters did not report every nuance of every fact correct the first time as they rushed into the storm while the flood waters were still rising and the information from a destruction zone the size of Great Britain was incomplete, faulty and chaotic at best for days on end strikes me as wrong in so many ways.

Here's a tip, Abigail. In a human disaster the size and scope of Katrina, it takes a little while to sort out the fact from the fear. Think of it as a history lesson.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 28, 2005 5:46 PM | Permalink

Thanks for the response, though I didn't ask if you think it's a good idea to rely on one report for anything. Of course it's a bad practice. Actually it's Tyson's practice in that story. I think it's funny that an ombudsman could cast a wider reportorial net in almost exactly half the space given to Tyson's front-page story.

It ought to be clear that interviewing the wide variety of sources that Howell did is a best-practice. And while you can dismiss my interest in Tyson's story as merely a bias claim, if Tyson had interviewed the right as well as the left, properly identifying both, I never would have blogged about it. Wouldn't have had a reason.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 28, 2005 5:48 PM | Permalink

Normally, I would agree with McLemore, but on 12/23/05 @ 9:56 A.M. on the PressThink thread for Dan Froomkin on Attitude, the well-known journalist, Daniel Conover, characterized the Bush Administration thusly: "My concern is broader, because this program fits into a broader pattern. Greater secrecy. "Bungled" intelligence. Sixteen words. jThe Patriot
Act. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib. Josehp Padilla. Habeas corpus (shades of A Lincoln!). Payroll punditry. "Media operation". Secret overseas prisons. Judith Miller. Valerie Plame...."

If a journalist can say a politician is to be judged on only the negative, why can't the public judge the press on the negative only? I think I smell a double standard here.

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 6:12 PM | Permalink

"While there may be certain things about doing it that don't vary much from country to country, I don't think journalism as a rule is "universal" or blind to national origin. PressThink, Each Nation its Own Press.

....

Each Nation its Own Press

2005 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures
Melbourne, Australia

by Jay Rosen, New York University & PressThink

In a state of nature there is no such thing as a free press. It has to be created— typically, we think, by law. Therefore we have not one press in the world, (which would be frightening) but one for each nation that has launched a free press, and kept the experiment going. ...."

So, we all root for our respective teams? There is nothing like balance or fairness, even-handed treatment of the subject? Just project the home team in the best possible light?

So what makes a war correspondent a non-combatant? So, Mr. Bush would be well within his rights to bomb Al-Jazeera, and Al-Qaeda in abducting and killing Daniel Pearl?

No wonder nobody (other than a dwindling minority of die-hards) believe it when we claim that we are spreading democracy. What do they know? We are the do-gooders and we know what is best for the world .... what, nobody agrees? Hey, did we ask you? By the way, how about these three people in this corner that do agree? Let us put them on the front page. Oh, the Pentagon paid them to agree? never mind, we do not want to really mention that .... the readers are suffering from story fatigue, anyway .... Let us give them some feel good fluff on how well Dow has done today. Oh, no WMD? doesn't matter, we thought there were, and that is all there is to it. The public is souring on the adventure because their appetite has been vetted but the kill proved to be elusive? no problem, let us declare victory anyway and get the hell out .... our job is only to wreck .... while we are retreating, let us bring in the airforce and carpet bomb, just to make sure .... if the Iraqis do not know how to democratize, it is their problem and they have to learn to deal with it .... that is of no consequence to us really .... that is why we are fighting the war there and making sure we do not have to deal with the nastiness here .... so that the pundits can pontificate with a clear head on the finer points of the fourth amendment and what the founding fathers intended .... on why the telephone tap story was withheld from publication .... We are working hard to compile a text book on the roles and responsibilities of the forth estate so that when the Iraqis eventually get democracy right, they will have something to guide them.

Sorry for the rant, but very few journalists even have bothered to notice the absurdity of it; there is only one side fighting the so-called war.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 28, 2005 6:59 PM | Permalink

Its easy enough from thousands of miles away (and many months removed) for an outsider to say "wasn't it obvious the President was lying/eggerating because he didn't want an embarrassing story published?" but its not always so *obvious* when your the person staring down people who have excess to greater intelligence than you.

that would be an argument that I would be sympathetic too... were it not for the fact that Keller should have been fully aware in 2004 that Bush could not be trusted on matters of "intelligence."

Keller appears to have relied on Bush's assurances that the program was "legal" -- that was a HUGE and very stupid mistake. Keller should have insisted upon proof that the program was legal, and the right to review that proof with independent legal experts. Instead, he acted like just another bobble-head.

Posted by: ami at December 28, 2005 7:00 PM | Permalink

McLemore, are you saying that journalists DON'T make a difference?

No matter, GWB will be gone in '08, but the unelected, unselected,non-taxing, non-war-declaring press will always be with us----whether we want them or not. But because we can't get rid of the press, we should judge them only on the positives----right, McLemore?

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 7:03 PM | Permalink

Jay, Tyson's piece may not have been perfect, but imho expecting "perfection" from journalists is pretty foolish.

To me, Tyson's piece was a perfectly acceptable piece of journalism -- not perfect, but certainly not noteworthy in terms of its imperfections.

For me, one of the primary issues is why Tyson's piece -- which was over six weeks old when Howell did her column on it -- wound up as the topic of Howell's "once every two weeks" columns. Why, if it merited this valuable journalistic real estate, did it take six weeks for her to address the issue?

The other big issue is why/how Howell could allow her piece to present a completely erroneous accusation (i.e. that the NPP analysis was based on only 20 counties) as if it were factually accurate?

The Post may have a achieved a first here -- establishing the need for an ombudsman to oversee the work of its ombudsman.

Posted by: ami at December 28, 2005 7:10 PM | Permalink

Returning to this ...

I think a lot of journalists who got into the biz to make a positive difference (a group that includes me) take the benefits of the process, whereby one doesn't get involved on an individual basis but brings about change through his or her work, as an article of faith. If I intervene as a matter of course I may damage my ability to keep up the good work later on, through a loss of focus, damaged credibility or simply losing my job. I think most of us would make an exception in a dire situation.

I'm not arguing that this is the most effective approach. But it seems to be the most common. Whether it's truly useful is a good question.

Posted by: Brian B at December 28, 2005 7:28 PM | Permalink

Back to the back story (which is the motherhood of this apple pie context) ...

I thought this was rich from Rutten:

If the National Security Agency, the most secretive bureaucracy ever spawned by Washington, can't keep a clamp on information about an illegal domestic spying operation, how could a bunch of editors keep a secret in a building filled with professional snoops and irrepressible gossips, which is what a newspaper is?

Of course, he wasn't referring to how the NYT kept this story an exclusive secret for a year(+).

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 28, 2005 7:37 PM | Permalink

McLemore is obviously out of his depth, but this got me thinking about how we should judge the press. Since the national press is part of the permanent DC bureaucracy and cannot be fired or voted out of office, how should we proles judge press effectiveness? Or are we just supposed to shut up and listen to our betters?

Posted by: Abigail Beecher at December 28, 2005 7:40 PM | Permalink

Abigail seems to want an elected press, which could be voted out of office on election day.
Does she also want elected mortgage bankers ... elected mathematics teachers ... elected bakers ... elected barbers ... elected candestick makers ?
It's an intriguing idea. Forget about letting capitalism decide who succeeds or who fails in a given line of endeavor. Just turn it over to voters.
But how exactly would that work ?
Voters choose the next editor of the Washington Post ?
D.C. voters ? Or voters nationwide ? Or just voters who read the Post ?
What the hell, I'll throw my hat in the ring.
I'd rule from afar, since I've never been able to abide D.C. as a place to live or work (too many traffic circles) but I do have several ideas for the Post. Here's a preview: I'd make McLemore my managing editor and put Froomkin in charge of weeding out kowtowers to whatever administration is in the White House.
I'm warming to the idea -- I hear the gig pays really well -- and my wife, who knows a little bit about reporting and editing herself, just offered to run my campaign.
Adios, Len Downie. You're toast.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 28, 2005 9:52 PM | Permalink

Well, that would be funny if it were not for the fact that the President (and congressmen and senators and mayors and judges) are decided by capitalism! (p
Pioneers, Rangers, Abramoffs).

But, of-course, if you left it to capitalism, Fox and Howard Stern would be the only media organizations left standing (remember Gresham's law?).

It is a race to the bottom; compete or perish.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 28, 2005 10:10 PM | Permalink

ami says:

But ami, you're misreading Howell. Here's the section you're referring to from her column:

In particular, the Pentagon said the NPP considered "the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting." Though those counties produced an above-average number of recruits, the counties "account for a minuscule number and proportion of total recruits . . . 275 out of 180,000 recruits (less than 0.2 percent). One would be hard-pressed to conclude much about income levels from such a small sample size."

Rand Corp.'s Orvis said, "You just can't look at the top 20 or the bottom 20. You have to look at the entire distribution." Data for 1999-2004, he said, show that the income of recruits' families is close to the national average for homes of youths 17 to 21, and family income among recruits has increased every year since 1999....

That doesn't mean Howell's allowing the Pentagon and Orvis to falsely say NPP only looked at the top 20 counties. Instead, the Pentagon and Orvis are saying NPP made too big a deal about what was going on in those counties because they're such a tiny slice of the pie.

Tyson: All of the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting had lower-than-national median incomes, 12 had higher poverty rates, and 16 were non-metropolitan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by Zip code.)

The fact that those to 20 counties account for only 275 out of 180,000 recruits is what they're objecting to. That minuscule sample size wasn't mentioned in the story. If you know anything about statistics, it should have been.

Your incorrect accusation is belied later in the column, when Howell quotes NPP's Anita Dancs:

She said that while the NPP did not have access to family income data, "we did base our analysis on Zip code data of all of the recruits."

All the recruits. Not just those from the top 20 counties.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 28, 2005 10:16 PM | Permalink

"Robert Scheer

Why is it not bigger news that those infamous Iraqi female scientists once routinely referred to in the media as "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax" have been quietly released from imprisonment in Iraq without any charges being brought by their U.S. captors? Don't the newspapers and TV networks that all but pre-convicted them of crimes against humanity owe them - and us - the courtesy of an explanation for the sudden presumption of their innocence?

.... In the end, this disgracing of the model of a free media in a free society will turn out to be the greatest cost of the invasion. We regularly hector the world as to the virtues of a government held accountable by a free press and yet routinely mock that ideal with media that often act as nothing more than a conveyor belt for government propaganda."

Wen Ho Lee, anyone?

Posted by: villageidiot at December 28, 2005 10:32 PM | Permalink

Oh well, now I have to backtrack a bit, because Howell also has the following:

All said the story and NPP analysis lacked context because they did not report trends over the past several years and did not look at "nationally representative data" or the entire recruit population. A statement from Gilroy and Maxfield said that "incomes and socioeconomic status of recruits' families closely mirror the U.S. population. These findings are contrary to those" in Tyson's article.

So at least you're not completely making this up, though I still think you need to accept the validity of the Pentagon's and Orvis's criticism that 275 recruits out of 180,000 doesn't tell you much.

I think that NPP made some broad statements about recruiting trends, which it then tried to buttress with its 20-county analysis-they're still hyping the importance of that at its website without noting they stand for just .02% of the total recruit population.

I was going to check some of this myself but, funny thing, as of 10:30 this evening all of the quick links to its database are broken.

Posted by: Christopher Fotos at December 28, 2005 10:34 PM | Permalink

"CIA Watchdog Probes Terrorism Renditions

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 28,12:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The CIA's independent watchdog is investigating fewer than 10 cases where terror suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries by the spy agency, a figure lower than published reports but enough to raise some concerns. ....

.... The highly classified practice involves grabbing terror suspects off the street of one country and flying them to their home country or another where they are wanted for a crime or questioning."

Rendition? We used to call this kidnapping .... If Al-Qaeda kidnaps somebody and tortures them, would that be rendition as well?

I am not sure what compelled Ms. Shrader to qualify her opener by asserting that the purported number is "lower than published reports". Is that supposed to assuage our angst?

I am not sure who we are kidding.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 28, 2005 10:58 PM | Permalink

No. It's supposed to correct the public record. Would you prefer the number be whatever anyone wants to make it? Regardless, in the clause you omitted, AP makes it clear that whatever the number, it still raises concerns. You, I gather, would have preferred a rousing "J'accuse!!"

And, though I realize you're trying to make a political point, I agree there is a tendency to fall back on legalisms and terms of art to describe what governments do. 'Rendition,' like 'kidnapping,' carries a specific meaning in law. The AP writer, however, does spell out in clear language what 'redention' means.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 28, 2005 11:57 PM | Permalink

Village idiot: (Man, I wish people would use their real names. I feel like a jerk answering an idiot.) When I said that in a state of nature there is no such thing as a free press, therefore it has to be created, and we have not one press in the world, but one for each nation that has launched the experiment, it does not follow and it does not mean that "we all root for our respective teams," or "there is nothing like balance or fairness, even-handed treatment," or journalists should put their nation "in the best possible light."

I don't know how you made those leaps or why you would pose the alternatives that way. Clearly, legal systems are the creation of nations, but that doesn't mean they cannot be dedicated to justice, fairness and truth-finding. For press systems it's the same thing.

But this whole area--the relationship between journalistic truthtelling and community membership, between press and nation--is complicated, and not explained or explored very well by anyone: journalists, professors, critics, soldiers, complainers. It is rife with confusion and demagogic claims, as with Powerline:

The Post's reporters are part of a lavishly funded and monolithic media effort to misreport the Iraq war for the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration.

To expect from the press "rooting for the home team," or "my country right or wrong" is unreasonable; to expect deracinated truthtellers and fact-collectors obeying the universal laws of reason is wrong too; to expect journalists in their reporting to make the case against a war their country is involved in-- also wrong.

I'm sure that clears it up.

Brian B: "I think a lot of journalists who got into the biz to make a positive difference (a group that includes me) take the benefits of the process, whereby one doesn't get involved on an individual basis but brings about change through his or her work, as an article of faith."

If I understand what you are saying, Brian, this is an unexamined belief among most in the press who sincerely hold it. I agree with that. Wanting to "make a difference" with your journalism, but also wanting to answer "none" when asked "so what are your politics, Mr. Difference Maker?" may not be reasonable at all. I think this basic issue is responsible for a lot of the credibility problems in the press.

Abigail hit upon a profound question in between the trolling and screeching: "how we should judge the press."

Since the national press is part of the permanent DC bureaucracy and cannot be fired or voted out of office, how should we proles judge press effectiveness? Or are we just supposed to shut up and listen to our betters?

PressThink itself is dedicated to the idea that we should not just "shut up, and listen." There are different answers to this problem.

* The free market will sort it out (a bad press outlet will go out of business.)
* Judge effectiveness against the aspirations and standards the press has for itself.
* Judge effectiveness by how well press accounts support pre-existing belief.
* Judge by whether proper truth-collection and fairness procedures were followed.

None are very satisfactory.

Finally, has anyone ever noticed that Jack Shafer will go out of his way to pretend that PressThink doesn't exist, and that this blog isn't a part of the conversation he thinks he is having? It gets amusing sometimes. His most recent column is about exactly the same subject as this here post, deals with the same facts, and asks the same questions. (Mine was posted four days before his appeared. And it was linked to by Romenesko, as Jack's column was.) In fact the last quarter of his column is almost identical to the first quarter of my post. Shafer will link to what Michelle Malkin and Daily Kos say about the Times and the wiretapping story, but then it's PressThink... what's that?

This is silly and it's petty because I frequently link to Shafer, and when he makes good points I will write about them.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 29, 2005 1:58 AM | Permalink

Chris, the Pentagon and Orvis used the term "sample size" as if NPP based its analysis on that miniscule sample, rather than used the "top counties" to simplify for the "statistically illiterate" how their analysis played out in real terms. I personally agree that the NPP's website over-hyped the "extremes", but there is a significant difference between falsely accusing someone of a flawed analysis based on a grossly inadequate sample, and accusing someone of over-hyping one aspect of their conclusions.

"Anecdotal" evidence presented by studies (or journalists) can't tell you much about the "big picture" in and of itself -- it is used to bring the "big picture" down to a scale that a "general" audience can understand, and its use is valid as long as the anecdotal evidence is consistent with the "big picture" analysis.

As I've said before, I don't think the Tyson piece was flawless, but the criticism levelled at her article is misdirected. The biggest "flaw" that I found in the piece was her over-reliance on anecdotes that presented the "worst case scenarios" --- one gets the sense that recruits are (metaphorically) being dragged kicking and screaming into the service.

But over-hyping ones story like this is one of the most common, and most venial, of journalistic sins that is an inevitable result of "humanizing" the news.

His most recent column is about exactly the same subject as this here post, deals with the same facts, and asks the same questions.

I was tempted to say something along the lines of "great minds think alike", but then I remembered who Jack Schaffer is, and realized that based on his output, he doesn't qualify for that kind of comparison. :)

Posted by: ami at December 29, 2005 9:16 AM | Permalink

Jay:

On how or why I am making the leap of faith .... My original premise (in one of my earlier posts) was that there is a universal form of journalistic practice, to which you responded by pointing out that it is not quite true, that each nation has its own press. I presumed you to mean that because each nation has its own press, they do not (and are not required to) follow a universal standard of balance and fairness, that each nation's press is within its rights to portray events in a suitable (for their intended audience - sort of like how the Times and the Post cover a Yankees - Red Sox game) light. If this is true, the journalist can no longer be considered an impartial observer reporting the events as they are happening (and providing a first draft of history). From this seemingly innocuous relaxation to (what to me is) a cardinal principle of journalism, it is only a short distance to being an embedded reporter and ultimately to becoming a partisan participant. At this point, Al-Jajeera, Reuters et al would become legitimate targets for Mr. Bush as does our embedded reporters for the other side. Under this interpretation, a war correspondent cannot claim to be a non-combatant, that s/he is simply there to inform and record the facts. This seems to be a bad result to my mind.

You do not find "rooting for the home team" by the media pervasive? and you accept this as how it is supposed to be?

Separately, would you care to elaborate on why this is so:

"to expect deracinated truthtellers and fact-collectors obeying the universal laws of reason is wrong too ...."

Ignoring the provocative manner in which the statement is phrased, I can understand if you are saying that such a thing does not yet exist, that it is difficult to engineer (precisely why we have press critics like yourself). But why is it wrong to have an idealistic vision of it that we could work towards by comparing our current practices with what would be under the ideal?

P.S.: Not being able to make sense of all the propaganda and punditry, I do feel like an idiot. So I do not mind being addressed as one! I do not feel bad for myself though, as I do not seem to be the worst:-)

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 11:35 AM | Permalink

"'Rendition,' like 'kidnapping,' carries a specific meaning in law. The AP writer, however, does spell out in clear language what 'redention' means."

So does, apparently, torture (organ failure, anyone?). If you pay enough, or find enough of a partisan, it is always possible to find a lawyer that will parse law (and even natural language) to serve any given agenda. Words are powerful, which is why the powers that be take so much pains to torture the language.

The function of the Press is to cut through and clarify, not obligingly repeat phrases coined by offialdom to get their ends. The legalisms may be important to a defense lawyer trying to get his/her client out of legal jeopardy, but little common good results from legitimizing such spin in the public arena.

The AP reporter did elaborate on what 'Rendition' means, but shies away from calling it by the name that we all use to refer to the behavior in question. AP is certainly not the worst sinner of this kind, and I guess I am remiss in not choosing the most egregious of examples to make my point

The German minister and his family that are abducted from Yemen by Al-Qaeda are not renditioned, are they? Perhaps AP would be willing to call it renditioning if Al-Qaeda lets it be known that they transfer the subjects to a third party, like, say, Al-Zarqavi's fanatics, who in turn make sure that the captives are treated lawfully (no organ failure)?

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 12:24 PM | Permalink

You may have noticed I was agreeing with you, in part, about the language. Journalism is always better when it leaves cant and jargon by the roadside in favor of language that is clearer and more direct. But the AP writer did her job. She told us what redition meant. And let readers make up their minds.

In your outrage - which is veering a wee close to self-righteousness, BTW - you want her to use a hammer and beat it into our heads. Why? Sure, jeremiads are fun and God knows there's much to be outraged and angry about. But at some point, you have to do what most good journalists eventually do: trust the reader with the facts. Readers are pretty smart.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 29, 2005 1:31 PM | Permalink

"You may have noticed I was agreeing with you, ...."
I did; thank you.

"- which is veering a wee close to self-righteousness, BTW - "
I don't know; I thought I was advocating the use of simple language, and its uniform application. Does that strike you as being holier-than-thou? I guess you saw my comments as being unjustly critical of the AP reporter, and that I could do better if I had the reporter's job? maybe, maybe not. We are a product of our environment in many ways.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 2:16 PM | Permalink

"It’s tempting for Times people to say: no matter what we say, we are going to get slammed by the left and the right. But that’s an excuse for devaluing all criticsm."

A powerful essay, and I wish I had joined this conversation sooner.

The passage above highlights the challenge for Times defenders--Since we know that many people will criticize the paper in any circumstance, it's a short but dangerous leap to the view that no criticism is valid.

Posted by: Marcus Banks at December 29, 2005 2:39 PM | Permalink

village....

many of the points you raised regarding the perspective of reporters were extensively discussed and debated in PressThink's "When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World" thread from last June.

as to your apparent insistence that "rendition" should be described as "kidnapping", the problem is that sometimes "rendition" isn't "kidnapping". (i.e., a foreign fighter captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan who is "rendered" to his own country can hardly be described as 'kidnapped')

Your overall point stands, however...

Posted by: ami at December 29, 2005 2:43 PM | Permalink

Since the national press is part of the permanent DC bureaucracy and cannot be fired or voted out of office, how should we proles judge press effectiveness?

I agree that Abigail's question is a good one.

I wrestle with my students on how to judge source credibility -- particularly online. Typically, I consider "mainstream" news outlets to be credible, because they are vetted by factcheckers (ideally), have reputations to maintain, and when it comes down to it, there is someone responsible for the quality and veracity of the content. You can call the writer and hold her accountable. Or talk to the ombudsman ...

The very first thing we need to do, before we judge, is to be willing to listen to what we don't want to hear and consider that it might possibly be true.

Then, we need to weigh what we read against our own impression of what is going on in the world -- and against other news accounts.

This means reading a lot, watching, listening, to as many sources as possible. And comparing.

Is "the press" telling us what we want to hear (the problem with the "let the market decide" model)? What the reporter wants us to hear? What the corporate entity wants us to hear? What the government or other third party wants us to hear? Or some reasonable representation of the world as we perceive it to be?

Are advocacy pieces pushing their theses because if we believe what the writers want us to believe, it will be good for us, or are they trying to convince us because if we follow their recommendations, it will be good for them?

This is where bias detection plays a key role. Is an op-ed writer with a liberal or conservative bias telling us that X policy will be good for the country because he really thinks it will be good for the country, or because it will be good for, say, his stock portfolio?

Do news accounts provide us with enough context -- enough background to understand the story in the greater scheme of events or the sweep of history? Or are they disconnected and presented as factoids (like the headline ticker on cable news channels), devoid of context?

I suppose context is another place where bias comes into play. But we need to understand that bias does not necessarily mean agenda-advocacy. Bias is what we bring to the table before we sit down to debate an issue -- the sum of all our experience.

That's why different journalists see events unfolding in different contexts. That's why it is so important to grok as many different news accounts -- from diverse sources -- as possible.

It's the old story of the five blind men who come across an elephant. They run their hands over it. One believes it is a python, another thinks they have found a tree. Yet another believes it is a giant bat. Another a worm. Not until they put the divergent viewpoints together do they get a sense of the reality.

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 29, 2005 3:55 PM | Permalink

Ami, Sorry; I have come to this blog relatively recently. I should have searched the archives before posting, I guess. But that would have meant that I would not have had a chance to rant:-)

Admittedly, I do not have the benefit of being one of the practitioners like many seem to be on these boards, but to my mind 'kidnapping' has a certain import and meaning, and evokes certain emotions in the minds of the public that 'rendition' simply does not, even when there is an accompanying explanation. Rendition is a sanitized legal term that brings to mind a meaning along the lines of 'to render'. It is hard to imagine that the public is able to fully grasp the import of this action when described as a 'rendition'. The choice of the term by the administration is certainly no accident, but the practice itself (staying away from the battlefield examples) is no different than kidnapping and is being carried out in the name of all of the citizens of the country, and it is important that the citizenry understand fully the implications of the government's actions. The readers may be smart as Dave says, and maybe it is not necessary to insist on using a more direct term like 'kidnapping', but why should a journalist have to take that chance? The politician may want to herd public opinion in support of his/her actions, and try to frame the debate in that manner to achieve a given result, but that is not the press' role, is it?

I remember a time not too long ago when the GM food industry's strategy got completely derailed, mainly by the NGOs' coining of the term 'Frankenfoods'. I just don't know if the NGOs would have gotten the same traction if they called it 'pest-resistant hybrid' instead. I am obviously preaching to the choir here (albeit a jaded, practical one:-)) when I say that words are powerful and do make a difference.

The point I am trying to make (belaboring, as some might say) is that it may seem like a good compromise for AP to let the term rendition stand in their reporting with an accompanying explanation, but it is hardly effective in serving as a prop for democracy, they way it was intended to be. In any case, it is a compromise between which two opposing issues? telling it like it is on the one hand, and on the other hand, what? .... not making the readers feel bad that their government is engaged in such actions?

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 3:58 PM | Permalink

Well, village, fair's fair. If you can laugh at yourself, I can take back the charge of self-righteousness.

You say 'kidnapping' has a certain import and meaning, evoking certain emotions in the minds of the public. And you're right. It's an emotionally loaded term, like 'liar' or 'sinner.' And just as every untruth isn't a lie and every trangression not a sin, every rendition isn't necessarily a kidnapping.

I think you know that, you just want the media to call those you consider bastards a bastard. Often, that's best handled by simply quoting their own words. If the government wants to call it 'rendition' or define down torture, you quote them. And then tell readers what it means.

The media have many roles and one of those is to frame the discussion as accurately and fairly as possible at the moment. Let's throw in clearly too.

You don't have to take sides to tell the truth. You simply have to tell the truth. To the degree we succeed is a continual point of discussion.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 29, 2005 4:37 PM | Permalink

Just skimmed through the "When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World" thread. I have to say that I do not envy Jay's job. Not because of all the vitriol that was being splashed liberally around in the discussion, but because it has to be a serious pain when folks (like me:-)) put forward ideas that have been repeatedly discused threadbare before and expect serious responses. The old timers are probably thinking .... aargh another insufferable idiot ....

Jay, if you are taking donations, I would be happy to make amends by sending in a small check in support of your site.

I do like the idea of the journalist as a citizen of the world though!

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 4:59 PM | Permalink

no need to apologize, I was simply trying to direct you to a place where you might be able to gain more insight into various arguments related to the ideas you brought up.

And just as every untruth isn't a lie and every trangression not a sin, every rendition isn't necessarily a kidnapping. I think you know that, you just want the media to call those you consider bastards a bastard.

Dave, I think he wants the media to call those actions that are basically kidnappings what they are ("kidnappings") rather than sanitizing them with words like "rendition." (In other words, I don't think he'd have a problem with the transfer of someone captured on afghan battlefield a "rendition"-- just with grabbing someone off the street, tying them up and drugging them, taking them to a secure location to be questioned, and when they prove to be uncooperative -- or the wrong person -- sending them to a third country to be tortured---and calling it "rendition")

and I think he has a valid point.

Posted by: ami at December 29, 2005 5:15 PM | Permalink

Maybe that's v.i.'s point, Ami, and maybe it isn't - there certainly are a few more qualifications in your interpretation of his his views than v.i. expressed.

But I'm not defending the practice of rendition. I'm simply noting because a reporter uses the word 'rendition', it doesn't translate that the media are government stooges out to sanitize anything. It reminds me far too much of the silly discussion on media culpability in reporting opposition forces in Iraq as 'insurgents.'

whether the opposing forces in Iraq are 'insurgents' or 'terrorists.'

Let's face it. We don't know a lot about the highly classified practice of rendition (except the White House now is saying 'Well, Clinton did it first.') or which are valid and which aren't. That information is only slowly beginning to be uncovered.

The media should - and I believe generally has - reported forced abductions under color of law for what they are. In the same AP report v.i. cited, readers are told about Khaled al-Masri who is suing the CIA, with the help of the ACLU, for being falsely abducted and held in Afghanistan for four months before his release.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 29, 2005 6:04 PM | Permalink

"it doesn't translate that the media are government stooges out to sanitize anything."

No? then how come I am left with very different takes on the day's news from watching Fox one the one hand and BBC on the other (not that BBC is my favorite channel or anything). Perhaps you meant to say "it doesn't translate that in the media are government stooges out to sanitize ...."

You do not think our media practices a degree of self-censorship where images from the war are concerned? You think American viewers have seen the full extent of the death and destruction that has resulted from the war in Iraq?

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 6:34 PM | Permalink

sorry; meant to say '.... that everyone in the media ....' in my modified version of your quotation at the end of the second paragraph in my post above. The gremlins have strangely gobbled up that word.

Posted by: villageidiot at December 29, 2005 6:38 PM | Permalink

The New Republic's The Plank blog has this, commenting on my transparency suggestions:

And that's just what Rosen calls a "quick sketch" of his transparency proposal. I'd hate to see a more fleshed-out version! I don't know much about Rosen, other than that he must be taken somewhat seriously by media people, since he's frequently linked to on Romenesko (either that or he e-mails Romenesko every time he writes a new blog post). According to his bio, Rosen "had a very brief career in journalism at the Buffalo Courier-Express" before going off to media studies grad school; he's been on the faculty at NYU since 1986. Now, maybe in the two decades that have passed since he worked at an actual publication, Rosen's forgotten what it takes to put out one of those publications; or maybe the Buffalo Courier-Express had the unique ability, not to mention the unlimited resources, to both report the news and report on itself. But if the Times and most other media outlets actually abided by Rosen's transparency prescription, they wouldn't be able to produce first-rate stories like the one about the NSA's warrantless surveillance. Rather, they'd be spending all their time working on meta stories.
--Jason Zengerle

The voices of sanity are Tim Rutten and Jack Shafer, according to the Plank.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 29, 2005 6:45 PM | Permalink

Well, McLemore, if you don't want to believe George Bush, that's understandable, but how about the CIA agent who developed the rendition program during the Clinton Administration with the help of Sandy Berger (makes you want to know what classified documents Sandy destroyed, doesn't it?) and Richard Clarke?

According to retired CIA agent Scheuer, "We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said, 'That's up to you'." Kinda like Mission Impossible, innit?

But don't take the word of a screeching troll like myself, go directly to the report:http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1539284.htm

Posted by: Abigail Screecher at December 29, 2005 6:47 PM | Permalink

how come I am left with very different takes on the day's news from watching Fox one the one hand and BBC on the other

Interesting, isn't it?

The BBC is run by the British Government, the U.S.'s key "coalition partner" in the War in Iraq. Its 1940s radio broadcasts and directives were the inspiration for much of Orwell's 1984.

Fox News is a for-profit business owned by a conservative Australian megamedia tycoon, and run by Roger Ailes, who was a crucial Republican Party media operative in the Reagan and Bush I years.

Which do you feel is giving you the single clearer picture of Iraq?

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 29, 2005 6:56 PM | Permalink

Hmm ... so much for the right wing trope that Clinton did nothing about al Qaeda.

Perhaps the rendition program is where "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike In U.S." came from.

How realistic now is the Bush Administration's claim that the outgoing Clintonites didn't even mention al Qaeda to them?

In December, Bush met with Clinton for a two-hour, one-on-one discussion of national security and foreign policy challenges. Clinton recalled saying to Bush, "I think you will find that by far your biggest threat is Bin Ladin and the al Qaeda." Clinton also recalled saying "One of the great regrets of my presidency is that I didn't get him [Bin Ladin] for you, because I tried to." Bush told the Commission that he felt sure President Clinton had mentioned terrorism, but did not remember much being said about al Qaeda. (The 9/11 Commission Report, 199)

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 29, 2005 7:17 PM | Permalink

So, Abigail, does that make it right for you - that Clinton did it too? I figured that would have you emailing the White House to stop renditions immediately.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 29, 2005 7:34 PM | Permalink

Jason Zengerle is a senior editor at The New Republic. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1996 and joined the magazine in 1997

Too funny.

Jay, you're such a dinosaur ...

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 29, 2005 7:37 PM | Permalink

Jason Zengerle

But if the Times and most other media outlets actually abided by Rosen's transparency prescription, they wouldn't be able to produce first-rate stories like the one about the NSA's warrantless surveillance. Rather, they'd be spending all their time working on meta stories.

Circling the Wagons?

The sad part of about what NEWSWEEK is currently doing to "regain trust" by being transparent about their reporting process, speaking directly to their readers with their own voice and reporting the ambiguous information a reporter and editor sift through when creating a story's narrative is ... that's what they should always have been doing to maintain trust.

Why do something that works to "regain" trust (in fact, earn it) and then stop? Why not write every story to "regain" the public's trust instead of assume it based on an outdated expository epistemological system?

Press Politics:

How do we know if the press has got the politics part right?

When we have a press that is discoursive with the public. It is not, currently, but is capable of becoming so. The press adheres to an expository epistemological system too often, and only becomes discoursive with the public when attempting to "regain" trust.

Press politics currently is the commodification of eyeballs and ears. When press politics becomes the commodification of thought and speech by the public, then they'll have their politics right.

An ounce of prevention or a pound of cure ...

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 29, 2005 7:52 PM | Permalink

Here's an on-topic controversy that might be of interest: the Boston Globe is currently being criticized by some for its role in the resignation of Massachusetts's CIO, Peter J. Quinn. Quinn is one of those responsible for the state's announced move from Microsoft documents to non-proprietary OpenDocument formats. The short version of this tale: Last month the Globe somehow gets the state govt to investigate the CIO for possible conflict of interest and reports this:

The state launched its inquiry after the Globe began asking questions about the trips earlier this week; it is being conducted by Thomas H. Trimarco, the head of Administration and Finance. Two Romney administration officials, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry was ongoing, said Trimarco will seek to determine why Quinn did not obtain written authorization for the travel and whether having trips paid for by conference sponsors would have violated the state's conflict-of-interest law.

Quinn is cleared a couple of weeks later, and the Globe reported on it. Two weeks later, Quinn quits, apparently over this incident, and the Globe reports it, but doesn't disclose the role its previous coverage played. It only cites "a report".

Quinn had been the subject of a review by his current boss, Administration and Finance Secretary Thomas H. Trimarco, following a report in November that Quinn had failed to fill out the required state forms to allow his appearances at numerous out-of-state conventions in 2005, where his visits were, for the most part, paid for by convention organizers.

The same Globe reporter, Stephen Kurkjian, wrote all three stories. (I can't confirm this online, but someone wrote that the original story announcing the investigation was front page news and the second story announcing Quinn's being cleared was inside the local section.)

Among the questions this raises: who tipped off the Globe in the first place (a Microsoft partisan perhaps)? Shouldn't they have disclosed it? If the Globe played a role in smearing a good man, as apparently happened, shouldn't they mention it when he resigns?

Some meta-reporting would sure help out here.

More on this here, here, here, and here.

Posted by: Brian O'Connell at December 29, 2005 8:05 PM | Permalink

Good lord, Simon & McLemore, where in my comment did I say I approved of rendition? Where did I offer an opinion at all? McLemore was skeptical of GWB's claim that rendition began during the Clinton Administration, and I offered a link supporting GWB's claim.

I don't really have an opinion about rendition or the recent spying kerfuffle. I do agree with Clinton that giving terrorists a trial in our system would be a disaster.

The unfortunate part, in my view, is that the extremists on both sides have grabbed the debate and those of us in the middle, who want civil liberties respected, but also want POTUS to have all means legally available to get the bad guys, are not having the debate we want and need. The "Civil Liberty Trumps All" crowd and the "National Security Trumps All" crowd can never find common ground. This debate is too important to the future of our country to be left to the extremists.

To Richard B. Simon: Excellent post on how we should judge press effectiveness.

Posted by: Abigail Screecher at December 29, 2005 8:28 PM | Permalink

True b-jaw, but the copies Berger destroyed contained handwritten notes by various Clinton operatives, including Clinton himself, I presume. That was the value.

Posted by: Abigail Screecher at December 29, 2005 9:03 PM | Permalink

no screech, you and repubs were implying that he destroyed documents that were irretrievable.

If Repubs could prove that he destroyed documents that put Clinton in a better light, they would have. Instead they talked about how he stuffed them down his pants, which was not true either.

*handwritten notes by various Clinton operatives, including Clinton himself, I presume.*
this is pure b.s. It was Berger's notes on the copies.

Berger broke the law, and lost his security clearance. It was more a political rather than national security indictment.

Posted by: bush's jaw at December 29, 2005 9:41 PM | Permalink

Abigail....

I suggest that you read the story you cited, because "rendition" under Clinton did not including US personnel kidnapping and imprisoning people....

He says at the time the CIA did not arrest or imprison anyone itself.
"That was done by the local police or secret services," he said, adding the prisoners were never taken to US soil.

In other words, the CIA would identify suspected terrorists to the local authorities, who would then "arrest or imprison" them. The article suggests, but does not make clear, that the CIA had facilitated the transportation of these prisoners to a second country "without due legal process", yet at the same time says

"The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law.
"And we answered, 'yes, we're fairly sure'."

So, what appears to have happened is that people who were identified by the CIA were arrested by local authorities, treated in accordance with the laws of those countries, but were denied access to what Americans consider "due process" before the CIA helped make arrangements for the arresting country to send the prisoner elsewhere.

Clinton's "renditions" seem to bear the same relationship to Bush's renditions as Clinton's surveillance of American citizens under FISA warrants bears to Bush's warrantless surveillance of US citizens.

In other words, Clinton worked within the law, while Bush works outside it.

Posted by: ami at December 29, 2005 9:58 PM | Permalink

Richard: Where did you get the idea that "the BBC is run by the British Government?" That is not accurate at all, although it would also be inaccurate to say that it's completely independent of the British government.

Brian: the Globe should have disclosed its role, and it wouldn't have been very hard to do so. "after the Globe reported that..." would have done it. It's another case of, qouting myself, "journalists should remain uninvolved but it's good if their stories influence the subsequent course of events."

Sisyphus: I've never done well with the New Republic-Slate axis. I get a better hearing from the Weekly Standard, National Review and the Nation, frankly. Slate reviewed my book, and instead of choosing one writer, they had two guys e-mail each other about the book over several days and then printed their exchanges. More diversity of viewpoint, I guess. Well, they both hated it, and joked about trying to find something to disagree about in between take downs of What Are Journalists For? One, of course, was Shafer. Then there was the time Shafer accused me of not being A.J. Liebling...

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 30, 2005 2:06 AM | Permalink

This is off-topic, but relevant.

I have the NY Times delivered, the only paper we get. My husband and I talk about cancelling in summer when we're busy, but in the winter we tend to read it.

My 11-year-old daughter turns to us this morning, as we're reading, and says, "How old are you when you start reading newspapers?"

I told her some kids read papers, others were adults. But I was thinking that for her, maybe never.

Posted by: JennyD at December 30, 2005 10:21 AM | Permalink

Wow! I come back from a little break and find out that I'm "the well-known journalist, Daniel Conover!"

I'll be sure to describe myself that way to the 99.9 percent of American journalists who have never even heard my name next time they drop by for shrimp-n-grits.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 10:59 AM | Permalink

Jay Rosen: "... journalists should remain uninvolved but it's good if their stories influence the subsequent course of events."

shorter Jay Rosen: "the production of innocence"

Jay Rosen: "Then there was the time Shafer accused me of not being A.J. Liebling ..."

You're NOT A.J. Liebling? You mean Jay Rosen isn't a pseudonym? You're not using a net-name?

You really are a dinosaur ...

Dan Conover:

I've been telling everyone all about you. You're more [in]famous than you know.

When should I tell everyone to drop-in for shrimp-n-grits?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 11:18 AM | Permalink

Anyway, regarding the point Screecher made by quoting my description of a pattern of rights-abuses I see in the Bush administration: Huh?

Which, interestingly enough, was not what I said in the comment she quoted (If you think I'm blowing smoke up Screecher's skirt, you can go back and read the thing yourself). I was writing about the attempts to dismiss anyone concerned about the secret eavesdropping story as somehow hysterical, a clever way of decertifying critics without addressing the subject.

Here the attempt is to justify anti-press bias by quoting a portion of a comment by a "well-known journalist" (who isn't) and claiming that it represents more than it does.

Both the subject of my original comment and the use of that comment here are pretty good examples the continuing efforts to decertify the press. I've got conservative friends who are disturbed by the administration's attitude toward the law, but for those conservatives who think the only "subject" is "Are you with Bush or against him?", any form of questioning puts you on the Group W Bench, which decertifies you as competent to question.

Anyway, here's the thing: I believe those of us in the "professional" press STILL lack a compelling answer to Screecher's root criticism: What gives us the right to question the president? We weren't elected. By what right, talent or training do we claim to represent the best interests of the people? And we need a better answer than "that J-school diploma on the wall over there, pal!"

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 11:34 AM | Permalink

I think its found in the First Amendment -- you know, the whole "free press" and "petitioning for grievances" thing is there for a reason -- and there is an implied expectation in the First Amendment that people will be using a printing press to question authority, because absent that expectation -- if all the "press" was used for was to praise the people in authority -- there would be no need to protect "the press" from those in authority.

But I think you knew that, didn't you Dan? :)

Posted by: ami at December 30, 2005 11:42 AM | Permalink

Yeah, and I believe that, too. Then again, could the framers of the Bill of Rights have foreseen the modern mass media? This may be one of the disconnects in the "debate": the professionals, imbued with that whole self-negating ethos we learned as cub reporters, keep talking about First Amendment principles. Our critics, on the other hand, are talking about scale and clout. The First Amendment protects our right to blog, and I don't hear conservative bloggers attacking that. What I hear from the conservative grassroots is this: "What gives you the right to have all that big media power? What checks and balances do we have on you?" Which working journalists balk at, because the vast majority of American journalists consider their personal power to be wildly overrated.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 11:51 AM | Permalink

"What gives us the right to question the president?"

I do not follow; some explanation is necessary here (or perhaps a reference to a past thread where one was provided)

Why do you need a special right to criticize any public official, or for that matter anyone? Getting elected places one above criticism?

Perhaps the question should be: why should the press be accorded a special, protected status under the constitution? am I missing something?

Posted by: village idiot at December 30, 2005 11:55 AM | Permalink

Conover, you're not even close. But I'm already tired of the subject, so no more comments from me about it.

But I have to say shrimp and grits do sound good for dinner tonight----thanks for the menu suggestion!

Posted by: Abigail Screecher at December 30, 2005 11:59 AM | Permalink

Shrimp and Grits: go for the Full Monty and include the sausage, as per this recipe. Here's the version from Slightly North of Broad (SNOB).

And now, back to our previously scheduled discord, already in progress...

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 12:27 PM | Permalink

I'll annoy everyone and answer with links:

Bloggers, Do 'Professional' Journalists Deserve First Amendment Protections?
Teaching arrogance...
Newspapers and Freedom of Expression
More (incomplete, inadequate) answers...
Freedom of the Press Belongs to Those Who Own Servers

From a previous comment:

What I'd like to know is why we never hear about all the good stories about what a great job the mainstream media is doing. Every day, hundreds of thousands of reporters and editors throughout the USA are helping democracy in America with solid reporting --- but all we hear about are the mistakes and errors. Why should we tar all journalists with the errors of a few bad apples? There is certainly no proof that responsibility goes all the way to the top of news organizations! If the media critics would provide a fair and balanced view of journalism, and highlight the great work being done by the reporters who go out each day, the media war would soon be over!

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 12:46 PM | Permalink

Please, people.
At my house, shrimp 'n grits is a breakfast thing.
It fortifies one all the day long for debates like this one.
(Don't forget the floss, though !)

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 12:56 PM | Permalink

This is descending into Weekly Reader territory.

Gee, I dunno, but let me take a stab -- the same motivating force that gave George Washington and Thomas Jefferson the "right" to question King George ?

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 1:03 PM | Permalink

Once again, I'm late to the party and Steve spoke my thoughts. What gives the media power to question the president -- or the guy who sells me breakfast tacos each morning -- is all those inalienable rights we used to hear about.

It's good to remember now and then that the president works for us all. We, the people, get to question him. And should more often than we do.

And though shrimp and grits sounds perfectly fine, let's keep in spirit with the season and have blackeyed peas and cornbread. Don't you people believe in tradition?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 30, 2005 1:25 PM | Permalink

"What gives us the right to question the president?" How bathetic.

More interesting:

By what right, talent or training do we [the "professional" press] claim to represent the best interests of the people?

What gives you [the "professional" press] the right to have all that big media power? What checks and balances do we have on you?

Can one of the answers still be based on a capitalistic merit system?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 2:00 PM | Permalink

Perhaps you miss my meaning, Senor Lovelady. You don't need to convince me we have a right to question the president. I'm already singing in that choir.

I'm saying the answers we've given haven't compelled people like my father-in-law, an educated and intelligent man who seems to accept (rather uncritically, in my view) what Jay called "The Bush Thesis" back in 2004.

The Bush Thesis. If Auletta’s reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren’t a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role— official or otherwise.

/em>

And here's Glenn Reynold's comment:

“The press, of course, is unrepresentative. It isn’t elected, nor — in its views, its background, and its personal characteristics — is it reflective of the public. (If the public thought like the press, no Republican would ever be elected President.) Nor does the public feel that it is represented by the press… But it’s certainly true that the notion of the professional press as a check on the government has no foundation. The Constitution envisions freedom of speech and of the press as checks — not the institution of the press as one. That’s a key difference, I think.”

Remember the whole Austin Bay episode? The people who showed up at PressThink were clearly not compelled by our ideas about what gave us the right to question the president. And while I accept that the most strident press-haters aren't worth convincing, I think we would be wise to come up with an answer that would bring the reasonable skeptics back into the conversation.

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 2:05 PM | Permalink

By what right, talent or training do we [the "professional" press] claim to represent the best interests of the people?

What gives you [the "professional" press] the right to have all that big media power? What checks and balances do we have on you?

(Notice the change between the "we" in the first paragraph and the "you" in the second paragraph ? I did.)

Still, fair enough. And since we're asking, by what right, talent or training does my mortgage banker hold the power to decide whether I buy that dream house that I have my eye on ? Who the hell does he think he is anyway ?

And by what right, talent or training does the Congress of the United States hold the power to decide what taxes I pay next year ? Who the hell do they think they are, anyway ?

And by what right, talent or training do my daughter's college professors hold the power to decide whether she flunks or graduates summa cum laud? Who do the hell do they think they are ?

And so on ...

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 2:14 PM | Permalink

Sisyphus points to the more crucial questions. I won't pretend to have answers.

Though I believe that the 1st Amendment, which Tim linked to in earlier post, is what gives journalists the 'right'represent the interests of the people. Not because the 1st is the 'press' amendment. It's not. It guarantees freedom of government intrusion in our speech, our religion and in our complaints against the government for all of us. The media just gets to observe for the people in those places the people can't necessarily get to.

That was the guiding principle when I started in newspapers 30 years ago: that reporters were the eyes and ears of the public. That we reported and wrote for them: to inform, to startle, to move. One of my first editors told me early on, "You're not writing for me or the publisher; you're writing for the guy reading the paper over morning coffee."

That was then. Is it now? I'm not sure. The conglomerization of news media, the ever-tighter deadlines, budget cuts and reduced staff, the talk-show media mentality and the crisis in confidence wrought by changing public perceptions often leads to a more confusing picture of just what journalism is.

When we stop writing and reporting for the folks out there - whether they want to know the information or not - than journalism will collapse into itself. I don't believe that has happened.

As to journalism's power, I'd like to hear just what that means. If the media have the power to change the political and social landscape critics say it does, than the media has done a pretty crappy job of exercising that power. Or doesn't have as much of it as folks suggest.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 30, 2005 2:23 PM | Permalink

Steve: You voluntarily do business with the banker and the professor. And of course Congress is elected.

The disconnect is when reporters claim to represent the public. Often who they represent, if anyone, is a lot narrower than that. The Bush Thesis starts from there.

Posted by: Brian O'Connell at December 30, 2005 2:27 PM | Permalink

One more: I think discoursive and expository are part of Jay Rosen's "... journalists should remain uninvolved but it's good if their stories influence the subsequent course of events."

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 2:47 PM | Permalink

I'm on a roll: I think Rosen's "... journalists should remain uninvolved but it's good if their stories influence the subsequent course of events" is a partial answer to McLemore's "As to journalism's power, I'd like to hear just what that means."

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 2:51 PM | Permalink

Bryan --
Which gets back to Sisyphus' question: Can one of the answers to the question, "what gives you the power?" be the capitalistic merit system?
The 2,000 or so newspaper journalists whose jobs were erased this year by bosses pandering to Wall Street would answer, "Yeah, you bet your ass. That's what gave me the power, and that's what took it away."
It's the same system that guides (or imprisons, depending on your point of view) that mortgage banker ... and, to a lesser degree, that college professor or even that congressman.
That doesn't mean it's a good idea; too often it leads to the lowest common demoninator prevailing; the Wal-Marts of journalism prevailing over the handful of Tiffany's, and even over the more numerous Targets.
But there's no denying that it's what we're stuck with.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 2:52 PM | Permalink

Where did you get the idea that "the BBC is run by the British Government?"

Sorry -- that was part hyperbole and part ignorance. I guess it would be more accurate to say that BBC is (in 2005) a quasi-governmental entity in the same way that NPR is in the U.S. Funded by the state, with editorial independence as part of the design.

The Bush Thesis

The Bush Administration can not entirely control the press, which is why it marginalizes and vilifies the press outlets and individual journalists that it can not co-opt. Fox News good. New York Times bad.

The Bush Administration can not control the output of Hollywood, which is why it marginalizes and vilifies the Hollywood that it can not co-opt. Schwarzenegger good, Michael Moore bad.

The press, of course, is unrepresentative.

Are members of Congress really any more representative of the public than journalists?

Look -- the studies show that the average journalist is more socially liberal and more fiscally conservative than the average member of the public.

I would venture to say that journalists -- print journalists, that is -- are also more literate, more typographic (as Postman would say) than the Average American.

Most are better informed (it is their job to be!) and many are better educated.

We have two problems here.

One is that you have an executive branch that is actively working to convince the people that the press is the enemy -- when the Constitution protects the free press as a check on government.

Two is that the free press becomes less and less free under corporate consolidation. Newsrooms that must consider profit margin as a near-top priority, and make editorial decisions that way (like programming more entertainment than news on your average local news show) ARE failing to do their job.

Who ever said that journalists are supposed to be representative, anyway?

Posted by: Richard B. Simon at December 30, 2005 2:58 PM | Permalink

I hate to break up this mutual admiration society, but the issue here is not the right of the press to criticize the president.

The question is: Who gave Bill Keller the right to break the law and decide for himself what constitutes our national security needs? The first amendment does not protect the right to print troop movements in wartime, nor to reveal sources and methods of intelligence gathering against the enemy.

A few months ago, a lot of people here were upset about Bob Novak revealing the secret of Secret Agent double-oh-Plame. (e.g., McLemore:"He's to be shunned because he revealed the identity of a CIA agent after being fed the information by two White House senior officials."
So I guess James Risen is qualified to make national security determinations, but not Novak?

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 30, 2005 3:23 PM | Permalink

Congress and the President are supposed to represent the people. That would be the people talked about in "we, the people..." as well "the people of the great state of Illinois..." as well as "the people around here tend to think..."

If the press represents at all, it isn't the people who are represented. (That's why we say: who elected the press? No one, no one.) That's Bush's job, the job of Congress, of elected officials everywhere. The press, I think, represents the public's interest in open government, the free flow of information, vigorous debate, and an informed population.

But it isn't the exclusive representative of that interest. That's why anyone can file a Freedom of Information Request, not just journalists. That's why it was important for blogger Weldon Berger to place a reporter in the White House press room.

Now the press may have cultural authority in representing the public's interest in open government, the free flow of information, vigorous debate, and an informed population, or it may lose that authority, or lose it with part of the public, and re-gain it with another part.

I think what many people here mean by "the press isn't representative..." is: "it has no authority with me."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 30, 2005 3:33 PM | Permalink

Steve: Fair enough. There is a difference though, and it may seem subtle to some, between representing the public and acting on behalf of one's customers as an intermediary. For instance, when the NYT was working on the NSA story, were they representing the public, or a faction within the govt, or a subset of Democrats? I certainly don't feel that they represent me.

Or to take my Globe example, which has the advantage of not being about Bush or the war, was the Globe representing the public or a faction in the proprietary vs open source debate? It seems like they were carrying water for one side and ill-serving the "public".

I'm a lot more comfortable with reporters saying I represent 300,000 readers or whatever (which you do hear reporters saying) rather than this idea that I represent The Public and the Goodness of Democracy, appointed by the Constitution. In the first case, it's clear that the subject can ignore that consituency (at his peril of course) or find other ways to reach it. In the second there's an implication of obligation on the subject's part that I don't think really exists.

This is also related to disintermediation, one of the big stories of the 21st century.

Posted by: Brian O'Connell at December 30, 2005 3:41 PM | Permalink

It dawned on me this week that adult life is a constant struggle between possibility and inevitability. What Might Be versus What Is And You Can't Change It. I'm day-to-day on this debate, although I know in my heart that life is a Space Invaders game -- no matter how many of the buggers you blow up, they send more. So I recognize that asking an industry like mine to restate its role in a more compelling way is probably just a fool's errand.

I want ways of making more meaningful distinctions in the newsroom. I want better answers to sincere criticism. I want tools I can use to identify partisan hacks posing as sincere critics, not to mention a big stick with which to beat them. I don't want us all to agree, but I'd like for most of us to agree on the terms we use in describing our disagreements.

That said, Steve Lovelady's answer is really the realistic one. There is no denying that's what we're stuck with. We're just easier to control when we can't even talk to each other without being "mediated."

Posted by: Daniel Conover at December 30, 2005 4:21 PM | Permalink

This "who elected the press" "who do we represent" argument is a cul de sac if I've ever seen one.

The simple answer is no one elected us and we represent no one in particular. When we're at our best, we're asking questions and pushing and prodding and being pains in the ass and that's because those who founded this country--construed broadly--carved out a role for a free press. It was to be hoped that someone should jump up and down and scream and yell and analyze and debate and that this would have, after a fashion, a salutary effect on the three branches of goverment.

I can't imagine anything more destructive of our work--and in this the newspapers and the bloggers inhabit the same leaky boat--than to worry too much about being popular.

If the NYT's decides that NSA spying is legally dubious and corrosive of democracy (both pretty safe bets to my mind), more power to em. Go and investigate and write a a great piece.

And, by the by, to talk of the New York Times' work on NSA spying as akin to reporting troop movements is nonsense. The NYT's story cited no particular case, and therefore tipped off no particular potential terrorist. (As I wrote before, one would assume that an Al Qaeda operative would assume that the US Govt (aka The Big Satan is making every attempt to listen in his conversations. It's kinda hard to imagine said operative shutting down because of the NYT's report).

These are grim times, in which an American President has decided to launch criminal investigations whenever the press reveals potentially criminal behavior by that same executive. I'd suggest the best defense is to keep landing well-reported punches and to concede nothing.

Best,

Michael Powell

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 30, 2005 4:45 PM | Permalink

I always have this foolish hope, Daniel, that if I could just explain to certain critics how my job works and what's involved in getting observed facts into print, the scales would drop from their eyes and they'd understand. If we could just reason together. It never happens.

Even in the days when people took time to handwrite their screeds and put a stamp on an envelope, still the exchange was wrought with failure.

I have come to think at times that journalism is a magic mirror. That people look into it and see whatever it is they wish to see. Whatever reinforces their prejudices and innoculates their fears against correction. It doesn't matter how correct the facts, how clear the writing, how pretty the pictures and layout. It's going to be wrong, corrupt and false.

Those are the days I drink heavily.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 30, 2005 4:48 PM | Permalink

Amen, brother. And yet, how many publishers now rely on focus groups o put out a daily newspaper?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 30, 2005 4:53 PM | Permalink

The question is: Who gave Bill Keller the right to break the law and decide for himself what constitutes our national security needs?

Bill Keller didn't break the law. His source may or may not have broken the law, but the New York Times has the right to publish such information under the First Amendment. (This was pretty much established in the Pentagon Papers case.)

Indeed, it is only because of the right of the press to publish information such as the illegal domestic spying story that citizens have any means of finding out when politicians use specious claims of "national security" to avoid disclosure of politically embarrassing information, or information regarding illegal actions taken by public officials.

I disagree to a very substantial extent. Most reporting is done at (not for) the public, the intended beneficiary of the efforts of reporters are now the advertisers and media corporation stockholders, rather that the public at large.

The single most pernicious factor in the decline of journalism is (IMHO) the creation of the news "corporation". Corporate officers are required by law to place the interests of the stockholders first, which means that the interests of the public cannot, under the law, be paramount.

The quality of journalism in a corporate environment is no more important than the quality of the hamburgers at Mcdonalds. Only if the decline in qualify affects the profitability of the corporation is "quality" an issue --- indeed, if a cheaper, lower quality product can be sold at higher profits, the corporation is practically obligated to lower the quality of the product --- and it doesn't matter if the product is reporting on matters of national interest, or a double-cheezeburger.

Posted by: ami at December 30, 2005 5:11 PM | Permalink

Michael Powell: These are grim times, in which an American President has decided to launch criminal investigations whenever the press reveals potentially criminal behavior by that same executive.

Huh? How many criminal investigations, two? Plame and NSA? Which one begat the "grim times"? Both?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 5:23 PM | Permalink

While no fan of the conglomerization of the media and how it's chewed up journalism into tidy little bites, I disagree heartily with Ami's contention that the intended beneficiary of the efforts of reporters are now the advertisers and media corporation stockholders, rather that the public at large.

Despite the trend toward more localized news - neighborhood news and chattier entertainment newss outlets still expend a lot of money and effort on such topics as Hurricane Katrina, problems of returning Iraqi vets, escalating border violence, prison gangs or a housefire that killed four.

I fail to see how this fits into a premise that is pleasing or beneficial to advertisers and stockholders.

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 30, 2005 5:28 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Judy Miller, no one believes a journalist who says they will never testify.

The predictions I've seen indicate that Risen will roll over soon after his book is published.

Posted by: Abigail Screecher at December 30, 2005 5:37 PM | Permalink

The Justice Department also is investigating the Washington Post's story about CIA prisons. So that's three.

Each of those investigations, Plame included, are dangerous and destructive. And, yes, as Dave noted, they come at a particularly bad time for journalism, as so many newspaper owners/corporations have backbones of sand.

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 30, 2005 5:57 PM | Permalink

Michael Powell: Each of those investigations, Plame included, are dangerous and destructive.

OK, 3. Of those 3, how many were the American President's decision to launch the criminal investigations?

There's an opportunity to break news, right here on PressThink, since the White House denies even requesting the latest investigation, much less being the decision-maker:

Bush didn't request the investigation and was informed of it today, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy at a press briefing in Crawford, Texas. The Justice Department is looking at the leak of classified information to the New York Times, which disclosed the spying conducted by the National Security Agency.

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 6:20 PM | Permalink

WaPo and NYTimes are not victims in the CIA prison and NSA leaks, they are power players.

You know the conventional wisdom: If you roll the dice, you pay the price. Both WaPo and NYTimes knew they were passing along classified information, and they knew it was a crime, but they rolled the dice one more time, confident their luck would hold.

Posted by: Seymour Glass at December 30, 2005 6:30 PM | Permalink

uh hum, Seymour or is it Holden?
Printing classified information isn't a crime if the information is true. That's freedom of the press.
Daniel Ellsberg self-publishes the Pentagon Papers that would be a crime.
The NYT or any newspaper publishing the Pentagon Papers is not a crime.
Now, if Daniel Ellsberg puts the Pentagon Papers on a blog, crime or freedom of the press?

Posted by: bush's jaw at December 30, 2005 6:46 PM | Permalink

"The question is: Who gave Bill Keller the right to break the law and decide for himself what constitutes our national security needs?"

Well, first off, there's no agreement among distinguished lawyers, who seem fiercely divided on the question, as to whether Bill Keller "broke the law" with his decision to publish, just as there's no agreement among distinguished lawyers, who seem equally fiercely divided on the question, as to whether George Bush "broke the law" with his decision to okay warrantless eavesdropping of your phone calls and emails and mine.
Nothing wrong with disagreement, of course. That's how we decide things in this country. In case you hadn't noticed, it goes like this:
Step One: An editor (Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, , Horace Greeley, Abe Rosenthal, Ben Bradlee, Bill Keller, Len Downie) does something that someone thinks breaks the law. Or, just as likely, a president (Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, George Bush) does something that someone thinks breaks the law.
Step Two: And then the courts decide.
Of course, there's a Catch-22. The presidents get to select the judges. The editors don't.
Still, somehow, over time, it seems to even out.
Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 7:12 PM | Permalink

Or, as Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and the London Times put it about 100 years ago:

"News is anything that someone somewhere wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising."

Every editor knows that.

The difficult question -- and it comes up more often than most civilians might realize; probably a dozen times a year for a Keller or a Downie -- is when to join the suppression and when to refuse.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 7:46 PM | Permalink

"While no fan of the conglomerization of the media and how it's chewed up journalism into tidy little bites, I disagree heartily with Ami's contention that the intended beneficiary of the efforts of reporters are now the advertisers and media corporation stockholders, rather that the public at large."

A long time ago, in business school, I had this same argument with a professor teaching a marketing class. I was arguing (mistakenly, I now believe) that the customers of a newspaper are its readers. The professor suggested that the newspaper's customers are not its readers. The readers are the product that is served to the advertisers. We then went on about how to segment and position the product, i.e., how best to slice and dice a paper's readership with targeted content so as to maximize advertising effectiveness and thereby revenue.

So, a given piece may be intended for a certain section of the readership by the journalist, but that is just a part of an overall design to package a slate of readers with a certain profile that would fetch the best possible price in the advertising marketplace. As (if) the value of the package declines in the advertising marketplace, the employability of the journalist concerned declines accordingly (unless s/he is willing to retool her/his readership packaging skills).

In the advertising marketplace, this feedback loop works in long cycles (24-36 months, perhaps?) and therefore the linkage may not be transparent, even if one is a participant in this business model. I suspect many of you have known this for a long time (or should have, given all the job losses in the industry).

It is an inexorable trend. I don't see how anybody can stop it (one would have to be an economically irrational actor to even attempt to stop it). That said, it is also true that chances of effecting a different outcome can only diminish with time. I get the sense that many posters here seem to (understandably, given their training) have a propensity to seek balance and nuance in everything. This is also likely to result in folks not recognizing the transformation of the news market that is underway, probably until well after a point when all hopes of engineering a more favorable outcome are lost. It is sort of like the dotcom bubble, or the housing bubble. There are always going to be plausible explanations that support what we see on the surface, and it is very tempting to accept these and ignore underlying realities. By the time the core logic becomes sufficiently clear, the bubble has already burst.

Posted by: village idiot at December 30, 2005 8:48 PM | Permalink

I find it interesting that the Justice Department is now investigating the "leak" as if the leak was the crime. It would appear that if what the Times reported (That the Bush Administration is in-fact conducting illegal wiretaps and spying on US Citizens inside the USA) then the "criminal" the Bush Administration wants behind bars is in-fact a whistle-blower-- a hero-- and not a criminal.

Posted by: Billy The Blogging Poet at December 30, 2005 9:05 PM | Permalink

".... just as there's no agreement among distinguished lawyers, who seem equally fiercely divided on the question, as to whether George Bush "broke the law" ...."

"Step Two: And then the courts decide."

Funny how all those disagreements between highly distinguished lawyers get sorted after even more disagreements by distinguished lawyers sitting on the supreme court in 5/4 opinions!

Posted by: village idiot at December 30, 2005 9:05 PM | Permalink

ami, 7-8-05: "Novak's silence is a way of delaying the inevitable admission that his irresponsible and unethical behavior lead to the outing of a covert CIA agent..."

ami, 12-30-05: "Indeed, it is only because of the right of the press to publish information such as the illegal domestic spying story that citizens have any means of finding out when politicians use specious claims of "national security" to avoid disclosure of politically embarrassing information, or information regarding illegal actions taken by public officials."

Steve Lovelady, 7-11-05: [Novak's] source is a rat and, by law, a traitor, which in this case he most assuredly is.

Steve Lovelady, 12-30-05: ""What gives us the right to question the president?" Gee, I dunno, but let me take a stab -- the same motivating force that gave George Washington and Thomas Jefferson the "right" to question King George ?"

Dave McLemore, 7-8-05: [Novak] managed to endanger the life of a covert CIA agent and her foreign contacts.

Dave McLemore, 12-30-05: When we stop writing and reporting for the folks out there - whether they want to know the information or not - than journalism will collapse into itself.

But please, guys, don't let a silly notion like consistency or any sense of shame stop you from pushing the NSA issue -- hard. I think it's a real winner for you.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 30, 2005 9:07 PM | Permalink

Rx:
Cute.
But how does the outing of a covert CIA agent and the placing of her overseas contacts in grave danger, with intent aforethought, possibly equate with the right -- no, make that the obligation -- of every citizen to question his elected representatives ?
You're going to have a hard time selling that one to anyone who ever stood up at a village council meeting and asked a hard question.
Help me out here, Ace. I'm looking for the consistency, but try as I might, I can't find it.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 9:30 PM | Permalink

Aw, c'mon Steve -- I know you're a very smart man, so don't start playing dumb with me now!

The whole context of this thread is the NYTimes NSA story. Your "question authority" quote came in the middle of discussions of exposure of CIA prisons, renditions, etc. Whether you noticed it or not, many commenters on this thread were equating publication of these leaked national security secrets with the freedom of the press to question authority.

At least when that authority is GW Bush, and the leaker is not affiliated with the Bush White House, and the reporter is not "the Prince of Darkness," or "in bed with the Administration," or something.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 30, 2005 9:48 PM | Permalink

Rx --
I apologize. After a stiff scotch on the rocks (hey, it is Friday night) I think I untwisted the logic.
Is it that Novak revealed a secret, and then Keller revealed a secret, and therefore each is equally guilty of ... something ?
Or is it that Novak committed treason and then Bush committed treason, and then Keller committed treason by revealing Bush's treason ? And therefore each is equally guilty ... of something ?
I have to admit, either way, it holds up.
Meantime, the Democrats, God love 'em, are, as usual, getting about 25 steps ahead of themselves and already fretting that if Bush is impeached and convicted, we have Cheney as president. (See www.davidswanson.org.)
How's that for a no-exit scenario ?

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 10:06 PM | Permalink

Bush supporters think the concern over the Plame leak is phony and opportunistic, and now they have new material with which to make the observation. We got it three months ago, we get it now, and we'll get it three months from now when we'll still be hearing it. It's a nice pull-up jumper from 15 feet, so we'll give you the two points, "Rx". But let's not confuse it with debate, or inquiry, or discussion. You're point scoring.

I missed this when it was posted, but I think it's provocative and worth discussing:

Online Journalism Review, Editor's Blog
The White House vs. 'Briefing': Same story, retold
By Robert Niles.

I spent about three years, early in career, working as an editorial writer for a GOP-leaning newspaper. In that job, as one might expect, I had regular contact with individuals and think tanks that help craft and disseminate conservative political opinion. (Less with sources on the left.) So I can say, from personal experience, that political conservatives in America years ago declared a private war on objective journalism. As part of that, the right has worked diligently to create an alternate media where information's value is judged internally by its political utility to the right, rather than by the quality of empirical evidence supporting it.
Yet mainstream journalists remain reticent to acknowledge that fact when reporting on conflicts between the conservatives and the press.

Which isn't surprising, I suppose. How does the press acknowledge this conflict without implicitly accepting it? And how can the press accept this conflict without abandoning its commitment to reporting on both sides of the ideological spectrum without favor? It's just a lot easier, intellectually, to pretend the conflict does not exist – to go on believing that the right subscribes to some unspoken covenant that respects the practice of objective journalism and to treat any complaint about a reporter or a story (or a blog) as substantive on the issue of journalistic process, rather than simply being an objection to that process's result.

But that's not accurate. Or honest. The political right does not want Americans getting their information from objective journalists, whether they be reporters or columnists. It wants Americans to get their news from agents of the political right. (The left might entertain similar fantasies, but, to date, it has made nowhere near the coordinated effort to make them happen that the right has.) This, among daily newspapers at least, is the great underreported media story of our generation. And the Dan Froomkin flap is merely the latest episode within it.

Chew on that one, why don'cha.

Just for fun, I'm thinking of starting a basketball blog on blogpsot.com, but I'll probably use a fake name because I don't want any reprisals at work.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 30, 2005 10:10 PM | Permalink

Aww, Jay, did you have to bring up the basketball analogy ?
I caught some passes in high school football, and I had a pretty good batting average in college baseball (even had an athletic scholarship) but put me on a basketball court and I can't find my right foot from my left foot. In fact, I can't even find the ball.
Tragically, the problem continued through to adulthood; I can't conveniently fit my thoughts into the right-left dichotomy that seems to govern every debate.
Thus, I'm doomed to exile in this new world. "Can't move to his right, can't move to his left; cut him."
But here's a hint, folks: They're are a lot more of us in exile than there are all the rest of you put together.
And we're starting to get pissed off by this reflexive partisanship that governs any debate, whether it be about journalism or about national security.
Go, Team !!

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 30, 2005 10:56 PM | Permalink

Billy: ... then the "criminal" the Bush Administration wants behind bars is in-fact a whistle-blower-- a hero-- and not a criminal.

Ever heard of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 30, 2005 11:33 PM | Permalink

Well, Jay, since you were gracious enough to grant me the "2", I'll be gracious enough to admit that I was point-scoring.

By the same token, let's not confuse R. Niles' paranoid fantasies with critical inquiry. I am surprised that you would give much credence to an essay that has as its premise the notion of "objective journalism" under assault. I doubt that even Froomkin himself would want to march under that banner. And this whole VRWC thing is so...victim-ish. I'm sure a virile athlete like Steve Lovelady would never go for such a limp argument.

The whole piece would be a lot more interesting, and much more relevant to this thread, if it were about the real unspoken back-story to all of these national security leaks. To wit: the war within the Intelligence Community (and the Administration more broadly) between Bush-appointed loyalists and (some faction of) career-employee or Clinton-appointed antagonists. Risen, Priest, et al. have never acknowledged that they are being used by people who may have an agenda beyond noble "whistle-blowing." This is doubly true to the extent that politically-motivated Senators (such as Jay Rockefeller or John McCain) or their staffs may have been involved in the leaks.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 31, 2005 12:11 AM | Permalink

Jay, please start a new topic.... something relatively innocuous, because otherwise I'm gonna have to go all moonbat on this Rx guy soon....

Posted by: ami at December 31, 2005 12:52 AM | Permalink

Well, I think using the term "objective journalism" was a mistake. What what would be more defensible is un-committed journalism, or "chips fall where they may" journalism.

I believe there has been a war on the press from the right, and that honest conservatives would admit as much. It is part of the larger cultural war, there is asymmetry in the tactics, the assault on journalism is conscious if not a conspiracy, and it's frequently demagogic, as with Powerline: "The Post's reporters are part of a lavishly funded and monolithic media effort to misreport the Iraq war for the purpose of bringing down the Bush administration."

You can agree or not agree, Rx. I really don't care. We already know that it's all justified by liberal bias, that the Press is a wing of the Democratic Party, that it will do anything to "get Bush," that it wants him to suffer humiliation in Iraq, 90 percent of reporters are liberal and that's worth 15 points to Kerry, and on and on and on. No need to repeat. I don't buy a word of that, you buy most every word. Big deal.

The part I found interesting was this: "It's just a lot easier, intellectually, to pretend the conflict does not exist-– to go on believing that the right subscribes to some unspoken covenant that respects" the press. I think that's true, and the pretending has been a big loser for the political press. But it is too scared to stop, and it wouldn't know what to do if it did stop-- pretending, that is.

ami: there would be no point in that.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 31, 2005 12:52 AM | Permalink

Jay, we actually agree more than you realize, but I guess you don't care. I just wish "honest" liberals who happen to work in the press would just acknowledge that they are such. (Steve Lovelady doth protest too much).

But I agree that such a debate is probably going to be another tiresome replay.

In the interest of genuine inquiry, I would like to hear your opinions concerning the unspoken backstory of internecine warfare that is necessarily made invisible by the contemporary PressThink of anonymous sourcing. This problem goes back at least to Deep Throat, and yet this lesson of the Mark Felt revelation appears not to have been absorbed by the MSM.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 31, 2005 1:28 AM | Permalink

ami:well, its not 1944, the President isn't FDR, al Qaeda isn't the Axis powers, 9-11 wasn't Pearl Harbor, and tapping the phones of American citizens isn't the D-Day invasion.

Tell that to this guy.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 31, 2005 1:31 AM | Permalink

Believe it or not, the pattern in which the losing side in an internal conflict resorts to leaking to the press--thus bringing public reaction into play within internecine warfare--goes back to the 18th century; and the very rise of the press as an actor in politics is tied up with the politics of leaking.

And with that, I have to say....

Goodnight!

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 31, 2005 1:45 AM | Permalink

To second Jay's point, I've never demanded purity from someone leaking a document or inside information. Nor can I imagine why I'd want to do so. I take it for granted that those in and out of government have biases and politics and that the motives of leakers can range from the sublime to the malicious.
So what?
As a reporter, I simply want to assure myself that the documents are real and that the story is important enough to put to the side the administration's demands for continued secrecy.
The stories the Times obtained on NSA spying, and that the Post obtained on secret CIA prisons, are terrific and brought to the surface disturbing changes in our political and legal culture (With all respect to Steve Lovelady, I don't buy that legal opinion splits more or less evenly on the NSA question--the more we learn, the more it appears that the Bush Administration broke with what several previous presidential admiistrations assumed to be the law governing such spying ... though I would concede this is not settled territory at this point).
As for the press being too scared to stop pretending that
conservatives believe in the press' role ... well, I'm not sure I buy that, but it's a longer conversation for another day.

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 31, 2005 12:17 PM | Permalink

M. Powell: So what?

1) Most interesting to me (from a PressThink perspective) is the fact that the reporter is simultaneously presented with two stories, of which only one is reported:
a) Such and such documents exist;
b) There are potential traitors in our government willing to reveal sources and methods.

2) The reporter has no way of knowing whether they are being "played" with documents that show only one side of the story or that omit critical context.

3) The reporter has no way of knowing what the national security implications of the revelation are, no matter how much reporting s/he does.

4) The reporter is complicit in a crime that may result in the deaths of thousands.

Posted by: Rx for BDS at December 31, 2005 1:11 PM | Permalink

Michael Powell: So what?

The Seduction of Secrecy

It's time we asked ourselves whether each time we publish an anonymous source story that maybe we are forcing our public to read a code when they don't know what the code is. Worse still, as anonymous source stories become more routine, do we routinize and even de-legitimize the source stories that will truly be vital to the public?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 31, 2005 1:45 PM | Permalink

Thank you, Rx for BDS. Your comments have been very helpful as an example of the illogic of the totalitarian mindset.

Let me tell you something, bud. This is AMERICA. We are a free people. When our leaders break the law, and try to hide their crimes behind a veil of legal secrecy, it is our DUTY to expose them - the legal veils be damned - because we are a free people and we are going to remain a free people.

Clearly this is something you don't understand. I rather doubt you are an American, but just some foreign instigator trying to draw divisions among these discussions conducted by people accustomed to FREEDOM.

Shouldn't you be getting back to your day job, cracking down on Iranian bloggers?

Posted by: Ace Sprezzatura at December 31, 2005 1:58 PM | Permalink

There's always a tension between the demands of openness and those of secrecy in the dealings of reporter and source. That includes the range of motives on the part of the leaker.

Both Sisyphus and Rx took offense at Michael's 'So what?' concerning the competing agendas of leakers. Apparently, they didn't read on to his next sentence.

"As a reporter, I simply want to assure myself that the documents are real and that the story is important enough to put to [aside] the administration's demands for continued secrecy."

Information doesn't go directly into print. It's checked, confirmed and further reported first. And while discussion on the over-reliance on anonymous sources is a good one, I don't see it's particular relevance to the NSA intercepts story. The Times held it for a freaking year, at the White House's request. Hardly a release of troop movements or some haphazard, routine press leak.

So I'll ask Tim and Rx which they believe is more potentially harmful to American democracy: government secrecy or leak-induced openness?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 31, 2005 3:38 PM | Permalink

"Shouldn't you be getting back to your day job, cracking down on Iranian bloggers?"

I have this on double super-secret background:
The blogs in Iran will be taken care of momentarily (shock and awe II coming soon). 'Rx for BDS' has already been redeployed into a super secret 'lead-lined bunker' in anticipation of this:)

Posted by: Phileas Fogg at December 31, 2005 3:40 PM | Permalink

Sisyphus

You conflate two different questions. Is there too great a reliance on anonymous sources for routine political and government coverage? Yep, you'll get no argument from me. If the WP runs a story saying that Bush has weathered this year's political storms and relies on anonymous officials to make that point, that's highly problematic. A reader who has paid a bit of attention the past year might justifiably ask: SEZ WHO?

But breaking a story based on documents or leaks is a very different matter. No one, not least the President, has tried to deny the provenance of the NSA and CIA Prisons stories. The identity of the leaker/source/whatever is of less moment than the FACT that our government is engaged in behavior that may be illegal and unethical and extra-constitutional.

In these cases, the WHO pales in comparison to the WHAT, the meat of the story. To harken to the granddaddy of such stories, the substance of the Pentagon Papers was far more important than the identity of the leaker. The same held true for Watergate. To tarry on the latter example, would it have been interesting to a reader to know that a top FBI official was leaking, no doubt for rather self interested reasons? Sure.
But learning details of Nixon's myriad illegalities was of far greater interest to a reader, and importance to the nation. Which circles back to the NSA/CIA prisons stories, where the same test holds.

As for Rx for BDS (whazzat?), oy vey. You posit a fascinating view of Executive Power, sort of John Yoo squared. While Louis XIVth would dig it, I don't. Presidents of both parties often insist that their most dubious covert acts are defensible because of National Security. Thank God a lot of reporters and pols and bloggers and common citizens don't let it drop there.

As I and others have noted, there's precisely no evidence that any intelligence operation has been foiled by the Times report, much less that thousands have died. And if the president's actions are illegal--about which there is much debate--then it's awfully hard to argue that those who revealed this are traitors.

The NYT's took an entire year to confirm this, if we're to believe the public narrative. And I know the WPost took many months to nail down the CIA prisons story.

You call it traitorous; I call it a free press with a spine. Nice to see some evidence of that now and then.

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 31, 2005 4:01 PM | Permalink

Dave McLemore:

Both Sisyphus and Rx took offense at Michael's 'So what?' concerning the competing agendas of leakers.

Offense? Where did I express offense? Nowhere.

What did I link to that lead you to think that I was offended? The 5th Annual Hurley Symposium? Why would that lead you to think I was offended?

Was I offended? No. Am I surprised that you would characterize my comment that way? Not really.

Apparently, they didn't read on to his next sentence.

Huh? Apparently? That's where your above the average American intellect and critical reasoning skills took you?

I quote "code" and "routinize" and "de-legitimize" and you come up with that? In fact, after that quote, and that link, your response is: "And while discussion on the over-reliance on anonymous sources is a good one, I don't see it's particular relevance to the NSA intercepts story."

You don't? Really?

For the record: I don't find anything wrong with the NYT holding the NSA story until they had it "nailed down". I don't have a problem with the NYT publishing the story.

And despite Dave McLemore's fantasies, I never did.

I do still want to understand how "a bunch of editors [kept an exclusive secret] in a building filled with professional snoops and irrepressible gossips, which is what a newspaper is".

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 31, 2005 4:05 PM | Permalink

Michael Powell: You conflate two different questions.

Actually, I conflate 3 different uses of anonymous sources that have cause a problem for journalists and driven a wedge between the public and their supposed interlocutors.

That is, the unnecessary use of anonymous sources, anonymously sourced stories that prove inaccurate, and anonymously sourced stories that are "vital to the public".

Do you seriously think you can de-conflate them?

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 31, 2005 4:22 PM | Permalink

Perhaps, Tim, it was your linkage of that particular quote from Bill Kovach on the risk of over-reliance on anonymous sourcing to Michael Powell's 'So what?' Michael's following sentence clarified he wasn't talking about haphazard sourcing. If I misread your intent, my error. So calm down.

As to the Time's ability to keep it's NSA report secret 'in an office of snoops,' it's not that hard to understand.

Reporters and editors don't exactly put out an inter-office memo on the investigative projects they're working on. Usually, information on those projects are kept close to the vest of very few people. I would assume this is particularly true at the Times.

All the other snoops are busy developing their own stories. And if someone did break through the walls of secrecy and learn about the project, wh at exactly would they do with it? Give it to the Post?

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 31, 2005 4:49 PM | Permalink

Back to the original topic of the thread:

Some of the scepticism towards the posture of the Times in instances like this one arises because of their apparent unwillingness to make amends to the people that got tarred by their coverage, wittingly or unwittingly. The paper clearly has a processes for determining the credibility of leaks, sources etc. In addition there is also an element of editorial judgement. However, like any other process, this one is imperfect too, and as such leads to some 'false positives'.

The Times enjoys considerable clout and power, and like it or not, is a part of the establishment. So when its exercise of this power results in injury to someone like a Wen Ho Lee, it immediately creates an asymmetric powerplay situation which enrages public opinion. A sincere public apology and an accounting would be a good start in re-establishing the credibility of the institution, especially as one which takes responsibility for their actions. Given that the paper is after all a for-profit corporation, it makes sense in cases like Wen Ho Lee to sit down and and figure out a reasonable manner in which to compensate the victim. Of-course, this opens up the paper for huge liability in instances where the number of affected is very large. This is not an uncommon situation in risk management and can easily be managed through a pooling-of-risk / reinsurance mechanism.

There is enough precedent, broadly speaking, for this sort of thing. A university engaged in drug trials is not a bad analogy. There is compelling public interest in allowing the activity to flourish, but there are inevitably going to be instances of mismanagement and poor judgement. There has to be a process in place to address these for the model to endure.

The stoic "watch our pages" tactic may perhaps have carried the day on the NSA issue now if they had, in the past, dealt more empathetically with the Wen Ho Lee type of situations. Just being in denial, with an ombudsman to take some heat off, is hardly a long-term strategy.

Posted by: village idiot at December 31, 2005 5:04 PM | Permalink

double oy vey.... there is so much to comment on, but while I collect my thoughts, I just have to second sisyphus's comments about the pentagon papers and watergate...

My gosh, I'm just so tired of hearing about those stories. I estimate it'll take another 5-10 years for their effects on the press, not the people, mind you, to end. We'll have to allow all the guys/gals who were in their "formative" years during that time retire.

Posted by: kristen at December 31, 2005 5:38 PM | Permalink

do we need to know who was spied upon and what the administration did with the information to assess the NSA story?

or is the fact that the NSA is used domestically enough.

Posted by: bush's jaw at December 31, 2005 5:51 PM | Permalink

Kristen et al,

Sorry to burden you with history, but such is life. I don't wield those two examples as magical inoculants or talismans, but rather because I see a clear similarity in the type and magnitude of the stories, as each touches on questions of executive power and possible illegalities. (By the by, I was in grade school when these stories broke. I cared far more about Cleon Jones than about Tricky Dick ... )

I could have, I suppose, as easily mentioned Contragate and Oliver North. The point was to find an event of similar breadth and depth.

As for Sisyphus and conflate, deflate, inflate ... Unless I'm mistaken I differentiated between the use of anonymous stories in workaday political and government coverage, and using anonymous sources for stories such as the CIA prisons and the NSA spying. I don't doubt it'd be nice to use on the record sources, but it seems to me the choice in the latter case was very clear: We would not have obtained those sources if we'd waited for people to go on the record.

Rather than simply repeating your question, I'd be interested in your take. Do you see all anonymous sourcing as the similar? Do you believe that such stories could have been written without anonymous sourcing? Would you favor not knowing of such stories unless the sourcing was transparent? (As I noted, and unlike the Wen Ho Lee case, no one in government disputed the veracity of these particular stories). You seem to suggest, with your ironical use of quotation marks around the words "vital to the public" that you see that as self-justifying explanation.

Just a final note: I would not remotely arguing, nor I'd guess would Dave McLemore, that the press' judgements is infallible. Far far from it. To harken back to a consistent theme on this site, that's why bloggers and skeptical readers and an alternative press are so necessary to the ecology of the press--because they'll question and skewer and break stories and disrupt the hegemony of the large press. I in no way favor a stoic watch our pages approach.

Sometimes we even skewer each other -- The Washington Post led the way in arguing that the evidence against Wen Ho Lee was weak indeed.

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 31, 2005 6:24 PM | Permalink

Michael Powell: Do you see all anonymous sourcing as the similar?

If you can't show me the documents, can't tell me who said it, it's rumormongering. If you can't trust me as your reader, then why should I trust trust me journalism?

And since you're fond of history and the Pentagon Papers, you do remember that the Times published them? It wasn't purely take my word for it journalism, was it?

Do you believe that such stories could have been written without anonymous sourcing?

Which stories, the CIA prisons and the NSA spying?

Yes, they could have been written without one anonymous source. If you're going to engage in trust me journalism, then the journalist should break the story as the authority. The journalist and paper should accept full responsibility. No weasely anonymous quotes. No "sources say". Put it in the first person and tell us, "this is happening".

Do you deny it could be done that way?

Would you favor not knowing of such stories unless the sourcing was transparent?

I would favor the press NOT reducing their credibility with anonymous sources to the point that stories "vital to the public" - quoting Kovach - have no traction.

Posted by: Sisyphus at December 31, 2005 7:13 PM | Permalink

Sisyphus wrote:
Oh, and after 3 decades, going on two generations, how long do you think the Pentagon Papers and Watergate will be the magical inoculant?

It truly is the gift that keeps on giving for a press that keeps looking to bring about the next palace coup.

Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at December 31, 2005 7:28 PM | Permalink

BDS = Bush Derangement Syndrome
The idea by some on the right that everyone who reports facts about Bush that make him look bad, or who disapprove of the idea that Bush can do whatever he wants to do and is not subject to the laws and the Constitution, is somehow deranged. This is a Krauhammer diagnosis, about as legitimate as Bill Frist, a sometime heart surgeon, diagnosing people's neurological problems from the Senate floor. Who's deranged?

Posted by: Phredd at December 31, 2005 7:44 PM | Permalink

Oh, and after 3 decades, going on two generations, how long do you think the Pentagon Papers and Watergate will be the magical inoculant? -- Sisyphus

You're a young squirt, son, although a bright one. My counsel is to be patient.
The breaking of the story of the NSA listening to my phone calls and yours -- or the story of secret CIA interrogation chambers in Eastern Europe -- may yet prove to the the Pentagon Papers of our times. It takes a while for these things to percolate through the system.
You -- and the rest of us, if we're still around -- should know for sure along about the time that you're sitting around counting your grandchildren, as I am now.
That's the thing about those damned inoculants -- whenever one pops up , it's never recognized at the time for what it is.
It's New Year's Eve. Let's throw another log on the fire, toast one another and hope for a 2006 that brings us a few more of those rare reporters who afford us a brief peek behind the curtain -- or, inoculations, as you call them.
God knows, we're overdue.
The country's immune system needs all the help it can get.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 31, 2005 9:13 PM | Permalink

Sisyphus,

Here's what I don't get (among many things great and small, no doubt). The Administration, the PREZ himself, has confirmed the NSA spying story. And congress wants to hold hearings, and some folks want impeachment hearings and the Republicans want everyone to understand that the Democrats did something sorta but not quite like that in the '90s.

So the traction would appear to be pretty damn firm.

On the CIA prisons, the admistration has all but acknowledged it and certainly has not denied the story. And Condi Rice addressed it in one fashion or another every day of her recent European tour. She even was forced to denounce state sponsored terrorism in terms she'd not used before. So, again, traction lookin' pretty strong.

As for writing the story on the reporter's say so, no anonymous sources, that just doesn't make any sense and seems far weaker. The obvious question that arises is: How do you know this? You would feel better if the reporter just said: Trust me. I find that hard to believe.

I'm most familiar with the CIA prisons story, and in that case the reporter tried to explain to readers from whence the story came.

If the reporter had been any more open, she would have exposed her source to criminal charges, especially given the obsession of this administration with keeping secrets.

As for Walter Duranty in the House, yes, you're right. With but hours to go until a new year, you've exposed reporters and no doubt bloggers and de-foggers for what we all are: coup plotters.

Happy New Year everyone!

Posted by: Michael Powell at December 31, 2005 9:19 PM | Permalink

As we say in Texas, "Athbhliain faoi mhaise duit, y'all."

Let's put the discussion away for a moment and remember Keats' words as we dance into a new year:

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:

Posted by: Dave McLemore at December 31, 2005 10:10 PM | Permalink

Byron Calame weighs in: Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence.

Well, PressThink won't be winning any year-end awards, but still had a great year. With the Judith Miller events almost too good (150,000 hits in October.)

I'm glad I had my showdown with the bias warriors in the summer. There's been a lot less repetitive drilling since then, and some addition by subtraction as a few of the more chronic offenders left.

I'm gratified that just this week PressThink got special end-of-year tributes from Ron Brynaert, a lefty (thanks, Ron), and Hugh Hewitt, a righty (thanks, HH.)

My five favorite posts:

* Rollback
* Andrew Heyward: The Era of Omniscience is Over
* News Comes in Code: Judy Miller's Return to the Times
* Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die
* Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over

Your nominations?

Finally, many, many thanks to everyone who participated in these threads--especially the regulars--and everyone who lurked. People continue to tell me that the comments are what make this weblog totally distinctive on the Net, and I believe that. So cheers and here's hoping for a year with more truth.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 31, 2005 10:51 PM | Permalink

That's an extraordinary statement by the public editor of the New York Times..

To paraphrase, "Keller and Sulzberger won't tell me what the fuck is going on."

If nothing else, this ought to end the unwarranted speculation that Calame is Keller's handmaiden.

To me, it looks like quite the opposite: Keller & Sulzberger have finally run head on into an honest man who will not bend; and he has the balls to tell both of them that they have come up wanting.
I think it's time to start speculating who will be the Times's next public editor.

God help him.

As for you, Barney -- nice going !

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 31, 2005 11:29 PM | Permalink

Calame also added an entry at his web journal re-printing Keller's two statements to the news media (made in lieu of answering questions) and directing readers to other commentary, including PressThink. "Given the paucity of comment from The Times about the article, I think readers might find these statements interesting," he writes.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at December 31, 2005 11:42 PM | Permalink