Washington political reporters: naked; apparently unashamed

...American political journalism has gone the way of Roiling Stone, Creem, Crawdaddy, and about a million contemporary rock zines. In Washington the hidebound rules of professionalism and "objectivity" taught in J-school classrooms have increasingly succumbed to the more flamboyant practices associated with the cult of celebrity....

...Claiming the moral authority of a code of professional ethics it idealizes in the abstract but repudiates in practice, today's Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group whose behavior it purports to monitor...

James Fallows aptly described the developing situation in his 1996 book Breaking the News: "The most immediate payoff [of TV appearances] is the simple thrill of being noticed and known. Political-journalistic Washington functions much like a big high school, with cliques of the popular kids, the nerds, the rebels, the left- outs, and so on. To be on TV is to become very quickly a cool kid. Friends call to say they've seen you. People recognize you in stores. Whether people agree or disagree with what you said (or whether they even remember) they treat you as "realer" and bigger than you were before. ... In short, many would love being on the talk shows even if no money were involved. But money is. The number of lecture bookings and the size of lecture fees vary directly with the number of hours you have spent on TV..."

...Once a degree of celebrity is attained, the star system functions to protect even the most egregious offenses. In Washington, "truth," in the journalistic sense, is determined largely by the institutional prestige of those first staking a claim in a given story.... By the time major news organizations and individual reporters come to have a stake of their own, even the most compelling evidence can be rearranged as necessary to keep a story alive. Anybody who diminishes a tale's value by debunking its premises isn't seen as a rival so much as a vandal....

Bill Clinton's spectacular folly notwithstanding, reporters pursuing him credited the "revelations" of paid sources; altered video clips to make innocent remarks appear suspect; allowed political operatives to take part in interviews; routinely hid exculpatory information; intervened with the Department of Justice on behalf of an individual under indictment; actively assisted prosecutors trying to "flip" witnesses against the president; published nonexistent "FBI testimony" under a fake byline; even gathered information from sources and turned it over to prosecutors. The details of these incidents are not in dispute; they are simply ignored. Journalists who documented them were labeled "Clinton apologists," and disregarded...

...[Dana] Milbank [of the Washington Post] was one of a handful of reporters who wrote about Bush's problems with the truth before it became fashionable. Although "embroidering key assertions" was as strong as it got, Millbank was deemed sufficiently hostile that Karl Rove reported phoned Post editors to protest his assignment. Milbank appeared to have no compunctions about reducing a presidential election to a high school popularity contest. The occasion of Milbank's remarks was a New York Times column Gore had written criticizing Bush's tax policies, criticisms that Gore's erstwhile running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman, had charged with excess "populism."

"Is the press covering a serious debate about populism and taking on corporate interest," [media critic Howard] Kurtz asked, "or is it really just about a slogan and two guys slapping each other around?"

The reporter opined that populism was temporarily in vogue with politicians who would soon have their hands out for corporate campaign contributions. "But I think you have something else going on here," he added, "and that the press is in an anything but an Al Gore-George Bush rematch [mood]. You know I've requested a job in the food section, if that occurs, and I think..."

"Because of a fear of terminal boredom?" Kurtz asked.

"Oh, absolutely."

"And that influences the coverage of the presidential race for the United States White House?"

"We've seen that movie already," Milbank said. "I'm afraid so.... I think the press as a group has to pull for Howard Dean from Vermont if we want some excitement."

No doubt Milbank was merely being frank. Comments like his, however, have become increasingly common among the stars and starlets of the Washington press...

...Gore, it will be recalled, was being depicted as a dreadful phony given to "reinventing" himself, largely on the basis of false or exaggerated anecdotes. The absurd notion that Gore claimed he had "invented the Internet," for example, was itself invented by the Republican National Committee. Time reported matter-of-factly that a roomful of journalists covering a New Hampshire primary debate between him and Bill Bradley on closed-circuit TV booed and hissed the vice president "like a gang of fifteen-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd." (By way of comparison, a sports-writer who acts like a fan in the press box is scorned as a fool.)

To some observers, it appeared that the Washington clique had simply transferred its collective loathing for Bill Clinton to his successor. [Margaret] Carlson's Anyone Can Grow Up, however, hints at motives that are even more childish. "Gore elicited in us [i.e., the press] the childish urge to poke a stick in the eye of the smarty-pants," whereas Bush, whose "inner child hovers near the surface," shrewdly treated reporters like VIPs. confided that he thought the G.O.P. candidate's "ridiculous statements" and "eerie blankness" during his first debate with Gore doomed his election hopes. Bruni's contemporaneous Times article, however, ridiculed Gore's "crisp pronunciation of [the name] Milosevic," mocked his encyclopedic knowledge of Balkan geography, and chided him for being "barely able to suppress his self-satisfied grin." To most high-flying Washington pundits, the election is about them and their careers....

...So pure a convergence, of the press with the Republican point of view, cannot possibly last. Regardless of its pro-Establishment leanings, the news media has an inherent need for novelty and conflict that takes precedence over all competing loyalties. Like many a disappointed progressive, Alterman laments the American people's taste for entertaining fables instead of the sober responsibilities of citizenhood. Their intellectual laziness and lack of sustained interest in public affairs make it very hard to produce high-quality reporting and analysis at a profit, an "apparently insoluble Catch-22 [that] endangers not only the journalistic profession, but also the democratic world power that depends.. upon it." No doubt that is so. But the mass-media cult of celebrity also has unmistakably pagan and Dionysian aspects that make it more volatile and unpredictable than political raisonneurs can easily imagine. It elevates its temporary wise men and warrior kings alike for the sheer chthonic joy of tearing them down. Publishers, pundits, and financiers only imagine that they control it. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make famous.