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April 26, 2007 6:57 AM
When Journalism Became Transcription and Reporting Disappeared
Bill Moyers' PBS special last night on the media's complicity in pushing America to war was so powerfully upsetting that I am forced to resort to using mid-1990s NBA metaphors to describe it, if only because describing it without a metaphoric buffer is just too depressing. This production was the documentary equivalent of Tom Chambers famously jumping over a screaming Mark Jackson and hammering down one of the greatest, most in-your-face slam dunks in history.To call the media's complicity in the Iraq War a conspiracy is an insult to conspiracies, because it wasn't hidden - as Moyers shows, it was all out there for everyone to see. The problem was, Beltway reporters didn't want to see it. As New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller famously admitted, in the lead up to war most self-respecting Washington journalists who wanted to stay on the White House Christmas card list refused to ask tough questions because "no one wanted to get into an argument with the president."
What's really disturbing, however, is not even what this documentary says about the past - but what it says about the state of journalism today.
In interview after interview after interview, we hear top journalists and opinionmakers declare that they believe journalism is no longer about basic, hard-scrabble reporting or getting scoops. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus says, most reporters today actually try to avoid getting scoops because they "worry about sort of getting out ahead of something" and - gasp! - making their friends inside Official Washington mad at them. So rather than, say, do the real work of reporting news, journalism has become a profession that is almost entirely about PR, transcription and packaging Establishment spin for news copy. This is why, for example, many of the highest-profile political "journalists" like Joe Klein and David Broder never bother to actually report anything anymore - but instead spend most of their time pontificating on horse race polls and campaign gossip, expecting us to believe that's real "news."
This kind of attitude, as Moyers shows, goes straight to the top. Take, for instance, NBC's Tim Russert - the Washington Bureau Chief of NBC NEWS. I stress the word "news" because, remember, "news" is supposed to be reported in the trenches, not transcribed in a television studio. Russert loves to brag about coming from Buffalo (often ending his shows with some irritating quip about the Buffalo Bills) because he believes it gives him some sort of working-class cred and more importantly distracts viewer attention from the fact that he is a longtime Washington insider and multi-million-dollar journalist. And at one point, he brags to Moyers that "I'm a blue-collar guy from Buffalo - I know who my sources are [and] I work 'em very hard." But then when Moyers asks him why he gave Vice President Cheney such a free pass to come on Meet the Press and spew blatant lies about Iraq's WMD - lies that news organizations like Knight Ridder were exposing but people like Russert were ignoring - we get this gem from Russert:
"There were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them."
Moyers quickly noted that at least some reporters "didn't wait for the phone to ring," and that CBS's Bob Simon said that sources debunking the WMD case "would have been available to any reporter who called." And that makes Russert's entire sob story fall apart like a house of cards. Russert wants us to believe that he's just "a blue-collar guy from Buffalo" who works sources very hard. Yet, apparently, "working sources very hard" means not even picking up the phone to make a call, but instead sitting in a comfortable Washington office waiting for people to call him, and in the meantime giving Cheney as much airtime as he wanted to spew lies.
Then there is the interchange with The New Republic's Peter Beinart, who since cheerleading for the war and berating war critics, has been rewarded with a Time Magazine column and a post as a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Moyers asks Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart admits that despite his preening around as an expert, he'd never actually been to Iraq, but nonetheless insists that he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asks that as a "political journalist" what kind of reporting did he do to make sure his prewar cheerleading was substantively sound. Here's Beinart's answer:
"Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying."
So here we have one of the Iraq War's leading cheerleaders actually telling us that his entire method of backing up his case was all about amplifying official Washington through brazen transcription. He actually sits there and tells Moyers that as a self-described "political journalist" his primary method of reporting on the issues he presented himself as an expert on was by not reporting at all.
This is what journalism has become today - and the worst part of it is that people who follow this Russert-Beinart method of sitting in comfortable Washington offices not picking up the phone or doing primary research is actually being rewarded as we speak. Moyers, channeling a fantastic piece by Jebediah Reed in Radar Magazine, notes that most of the people who regurgitated the Washington Establishment's debunked case for war have actually been rewarded with even more prominent positions in the media. And while these desperate-for-attention media icons like Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman are happy to throw themselves in front of cameras for almost any opportunity to promote themselves, they categorically refused to talk to Moyers for his PBS special.
I went to journalism school because I thought journalism was about sifting through the B.S. in order to challenge power and hold the Establishment accountable. Bill Moyers and the folks I've gotten to know at McClatchy Newspapers who Moyers highlights show that that long tradition still exists. But the fact that they are such rare exceptions to the rule also show that the incentive system in journalism today is to reward not the people who challenge power, but the people who worship it. And though Tim Russert and Peter Beinart and Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman can kick back in Washington with their six figure salaries and tell themselves that they are really Important People, what we have seen is that they are part of a new journalistic culture that is threatening to destroy what once was a truly noble profession and undermine our democracy.
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On the money dude! If we had no internet we'd be screwed today.
I now really enjoy Moyers. But I didn't know of him until a couple of years ago. He could arguably get a bigger audience and reach more people with his ideas and journalism by going to a network other than PBS. Why doesn't he?
Well, I like this, but there's a part of the analysis that Mr. Sirota is missing.
That is that the media companies that pay the salaries of these "reporters" appear to be perfectly happy with their performance. It seems to be very logical to assume that these employees are doing exactly what they are told to do.
For instance, I can't think of a single American media organization that has made substantial changes to the way it operates. Given that many agree now that the reporting leading up the war was very incorrect and misleading, and that at least some news organizations have acknowledged that, you'd think that you'd see changes in procedures and standards to make sure it doesn't happen again. You haven't. That's very telling.
Also, as noted in Mr. Sirota's piece, all of these people who did such a poor job are either still in their positions, or they've been promoted or offered better new jobs. One would think that reporters that perform so badly would lose their reputations, either be severely reprimanded or fired from their jobs. At the least, one would think it would be a serious blot on their careers. It hasn't been. Note that Tim Russert is still the head of NBC's DC staff and still on Meet the Press. If NBC news was in any way concerned with either how its DC operation is being run, or what lies are being told on Meet the Press, then I'd expect Mr. Russert to be removed from one or both jobs. He hasn't been. That is very telling.
So, while this focuses on the nuts and bolts of what went wrong, it seems to miss the real root causes. Its interesting as far as it goes, but to really understand the world we live in and what passes for news in it, one has to keep pulling on this string to unravel the whole thing.
And of course, that also answers the question of why Mr. Moyers isn't at a "network other than PBS." They don't want him and have little interest in his informative reporting. The other networks want exactly what it is that they are showing everyday. Mr. Moyers would have large problems in doing this type of story at any other US network.
I don't have cable so I missed the PBS show last night. We gave up cable years ago because we simply got sick of the commercials (ya, Tivo is something to look into - for now the web). Remember when you paid for cable so you didn't have to watch commercials? Anyways, if you missed it you can watch it here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html
If you haven't seen it, check it out! I can't recommend it highly enough. It's the most insightful summary I've yet seen on what has occurred over the last 6 years. It left me amazed that this could happen here in the good ole USA, but also puzzled why Bush and Cheney are still in power, and not behind bars. Isn't lying an impeachable offense these days?
I greatly enjoy Sirota's blog - I really appreciate hearing from a progressive who has experience inside politics. Another blogger who is doing excellent work, especially on issues related to journalism in these challenging times is Glenn Greenwald. He's a civil liberties lawyer that adds so much to understanding the issues from a legal perspecitve:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
What scares me about the MSM is that they are already gaming the Democratic presidential candidates. They are fawning over Hillary and Obama whilst giving the others the short shrift which is really shameful.
Its like they are taking orders from Murdoch.
And you know the moment that either Obama or Hillary wins the nomination the MSM will pull out their knives and skin both of them alive.
On the GOP side they are doing everything possible to make McCain and Giuliani as viable choices for th whitehouse.
IMO just wait until the presidential campaign really gets going you're going to see a real ugly side of the MSM.
I'm quite sure that lying a nation into a war was exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they used the English common law term of "high crimes and misdemeaners". They took war powers very seriously, and their writings clearly say they thought war was possibly the greatest threat to the liberties they had established.
And if not that, certainly the abuse of power where the executive claims powers far beyond what's given in the Constitution. Personally, I'd have thought there would be an immediate impeachment hearing the first time Bush even wrote a "signing statement". Congress' response should have been to say clearly "we write the laws, you enforce what we write. what you think doesn't matter. And if you can't or won't enforce the law we'll yank you out of office so fast your head will spin."
But that assumes a Congress that both takes it duties to the Constitution seriously, and that also has the balls to act.
And yep, expect the corporate media to keep doing all you describe. Any candidates that don't pass their muster get the phases of being ignored, then being ridiculed, then being mercilessly attacked.
And the Dems must not be fooled like the way they were with Kerry. Remember the corporate media fawned all over Kerry and were a key factor in pushing him from like 4th place ahead of Dean and into the nomination. Then the knives came out in the general election. Same thing will happen again, but the Dems will probably fall for it again and we'll hear all about how one of these people is "electable" because the corporate media is fawning all over them. The Dems remind me a lot of Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. :)
For instance, how often do you already hear that no one should take Kucinich seriously because he clearly isn't electable. Funny how letting the American people decide that isn't an option. One thing progressives need to do is stop listening to the corporate media ... in fact often the best course is to do the opposite of what they say.
The MSM seem determined to make the Democratic Party Primary into an ONLY two candidate race. And the two candidates THEY have selected are Hill and 'Bama, the two big corporate money-holders. The way the MSM directors have it figured Hill and 'Bama will cause the least change to THEIR bottom lines.
The candidates who are more likely to appeal to the rank and file Democrats have been marginalized by MSM refusing to view them as "viable candidates" to the public. Thus Clark, Richardson, Edwards, and Kerry have been banished. Why, because MSM doesn't want us to have a choice.
With the BILLION DOLLARS MSM will make off the campaign can you honestly think MSM will even allow public funded elections to be even spoken of. And let us VOW to defend PBS to the death since only PBS allows truths, regularly spoken by Bill Moyers, to appear on National TV
But seriously folks when Big Al, the last man to really win the presidency throws his hat into the ring, I only hope he has the fore site to make Wes Clark his running mate.
Bill Moyers gave the commencement speech when I graduated from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse in 1980. He was great then and he's great now. I too went to J-school because I thought it was about truth to power. I cannot believe what has happened to the profession of journalism in the past 25 years...
Bill Moyers gave the commencement speech when I graduated from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse in 1980. He was great then and he's great now. I too went to J-school because I thought it was about speaking truth to power. I cannot believe what has happened to the profession of journalism in the past 25 years...
There's a reason that I go to BBC on line, and when I want something regional go to sites like El Universal, and The Korea Herald.
For real local news, the upstart Butte Weekly(locally owned and operated) has more and better news than the Montana (sub)Standard(a minion of Lee Enterprises).
There are reasons that the Republicans keep wanting to kill off PBS. Bill Moyers is one of them. PBS also brought us news of the abuse of PTSD soldiers at Fort Carson, which was promptly shoved to the back burner by the rest of the media, and the government.
The same folks who brought us K-street are bringing us the current propagandists-as-reporters big media coverage.
I've quit even watching local TV stations unless there's something specific, that I want to see, that I know they've covered locally. They've all got feeds to the big networks, and that's as healthy as taking high-fructose corn syrup intravenously.
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