Journalism's pangs of ethical conscience

All the President's Flacks
All the President's Flacks
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 04 December 2005

When "all of the facts come out in this case," Bob Woodward told Terry Gross on NPR in July, "it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great."

Who's laughing now?

Why Mr. Woodward took more than two years to tell his editor that he had his own personal Deep Throat in the Wilson affair is a mystery best tackled by combatants in the Washington Post newsroom. (Been there, done that here at The Times.) Mr. Woodward says he wanted to avoid a subpoena, but he first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was in the C.I.A. in mid-June 2003, more than six months before Patrick Fitzgerald or subpoenas entered the picture. Never mind. Far more disturbing is Mr. Woodward's utter failure to recognize the import of the story that fell into his lap so long ago.

The reporter who with Carl Bernstein turned a "third-rate burglary" into a key for unlocking the true character of the Nixon White House still can't quite believe that a Washington leak story unworthy of his attention has somehow become the drip-drip-drip exposing the debacle of Iraq. "I don't know how this is about the buildup to the war, the Valerie Plame Wilson issue," he said on "Larry King Live" on the eve of the Scooter Libby indictment. Everyone else does. Largely because of the revelations prompted by the marathon Fitzgerald investigation, a majority of Americans now believe that the Bush administration deliberately misled the country into war. The case's consequences for journalism have been nearly as traumatic, and not just because of the subpoenas. The Wilson story has ruthlessly exposed the credulousness with which most (though not all) of the press bought and disseminated the White House line that any delay in invading Iraq would bring nuclear Armageddon.

"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," Judy Miller said, with no exaggeration, before leaving The Times. The Woodward affair, for all its superficial similarities to the Miller drama, offers an even wider window onto the White House flimflams and the press's role in enabling them. Mr. Woodward knows more about the internal workings of this presidency than any other reporter. He has been granted access to all its top officials, including lengthy interviews with the president himself, to produce two Bush best sellers since 9/11. But he was gamed anyway by the White House, which exploited his special stature to the fullest for its own propagandistic ends.

Mr. Woodward, to his credit, is not guilty of hyping Saddam's W.M.D.'s. And his books did contain valuable news: of the Wolfowitz axis' early push to take on Iraq, of the president's messianic view of himself as God's chosen warrior, of the Powell-Rumsfeld conflicts that led to the war's catastrophic execution. Yet to reread these Woodward books today, especially the second, the 2004 "Plan of Attack," is to understand just how slickly his lofty sources deflected him from the big picture, of which the Wilson case is just one small, if illuminating, piece.

In her famous takedown of Mr. Woodward for The New York Review of Books in 1996, Joan Didion wrote that what he "chooses to leave unrecorded, or what he apparently does not think to elicit, is in many ways more instructive than what he commits to paper." She was referring to his account of Hillary Clinton's health care fiasco in his book "The Agenda," but her words also fit his account of the path to war in Iraq. This time, however, there is much more at stake than there was in Hillarycare.

What remains unrecorded in "Plan of Attack" is any inkling of the disinformation campaign built to gin up this war. While Mr. Woodward tells us about the controversial posturing of Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy, there's only an incidental, even dismissive allusion to Mr. Feith's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. That was the secret intelligence unit established at the Pentagon to "prove" Iraq-Qaeda connections, which Vice President Dick Cheney then would trumpet in arenas like "Meet the Press." Mr. Woodward mentions in passing the White House Iraq Group, convened to market the war, but ignores the direct correlation between WHIG's inception and the accelerating hysteria in the Bush-Cheney-Rice warnings about Saddam's impending mushroom clouds in the late summer and fall of 2002. This story was broken by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus in Mr. Woodward's own paper eight months before "Plan of Attack" was published.

Near the book's end, Mr. Woodward writes of some "troubling" tips from three sources "that the intelligence on W.M.D. was not as conclusive as the C.I.A. and the administration had suggested" and of how he helped push a Pincus story saying much the same into print just before the invasion. (It appeared on Page 17.) But Mr. Woodward never seriously investigates others' suspicions that the White House might have deliberately suppressed or ignored evidence that would contradict George Tenet's "slam-dunk" case for Saddam's W.M.D.'s. "Plan of Attack" gives greatest weight instead to the White House spin that any hyped intelligence was an innocent error or solely the result of the ineptitude of Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A.

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby are omnipresent in the narrative, and Mr. Woodward says now that his notes show he had questions for them back then about "yellowcake" uranium and "Joe Wilson's wife." But the leak case - indeed Valerie Wilson herself - is never mentioned in the 400-plus pages, even though it had exploded more than six months before he completed the book. That's the most damning omission of all and suggests the real motive for his failure to share what he did know about this case with either his editor or his readers. If you assume, as Mr. Woodward apparently did against mounting evidence to the contrary, that the White House acted in good faith when purveying its claims of imminent doomsday and pre-9/11 Qaeda-Saddam collaborations, then there's no White House wrongdoing that needs to be covered up. So why would anyone in the administration try to do something nasty to silence a whistle-blower like Joseph Wilson? The West Wing was merely gossiping idly about the guy, Mr. Woodward now says, in perhaps an unconscious echo of the Karl Rove defense strategy.

Joan Didion was among the first to point out that Mr. Woodward's passive notion of journalistic neutrality is easily manipulated by his sources. He flatters those who give him the most access by upholding their version of events. Hence Mary Matalin, the former Cheney flack who helped shape WHIG's war propaganda, rushed to defend Mr. Woodward last week. Asked by Howard Kurtz of The Post why "an administration not known for being fond of the press put so much effort into cooperating with Woodward," Ms. Matalin responded that he does "an extraordinary job" and that "it's in the White House's interest to have a neutral source writing the history of the way Bush makes decisions." You bet it is. Sounds as if she's read Didion as well as Machiavelli.

In an analysis of Mr. Woodward written for The Huffington Post, Nora Ephron likens him to Theodore H. White, who invented the modern "inside" Washington book with "The Making of the President 1960." White eventually became such an insider himself that in "The Making of the President 1972," he missed Watergate, the story broken under his (and much of the press's) nose by Woodward and Bernstein. "They were outsiders," Ms. Ephron writes of those then-lowly beat reporters, "and their lack of top-level access was probably their greatest asset."

INDEED it's reporters who didn't have top-level access to the likes of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney who have gotten the Iraq story right. In the new book "Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11," Kristina Borjesson interviews some of them, including Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder, who heard early on from a low-level source that "the vice president is lying" and produced a story headlined "Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials" on Sept. 6, 2002. That was two days before administration officials fanned out on the Sunday-morning talk shows to point ominously at the now-discredited front-page Times story about Saddam's aluminum tubes. Warren Strobel, a frequent reportorial collaborator with Mr. Landay at Knight Ridder, tells Ms. Borjesson, "The most surprising thing to us was we had the field to ourselves for so long in terms of writing stuff that was critical or questioning the administration's case for war."

Such critical stories - including those at The Post and The Times that were too often relegated to Page 17 - did not get traction until the failure to find W.M.D.'s and the Wilson affair made America take a second look. Now that the country has awakened to that history, it will take more to shock it than the latest revelation that the Defense Department has been paying Iraqi newspapers to print its propaganda. Thanks in large part to the case Mr. Woodward found so inconsequential, everyone knows that much of the American press did just the same before the war - and, unlike those Iraqi newspapers or, say, Armstrong Williams, did so gratis.

ecause space is infinite there will hopefully be more room for thoughtful pieces, longer pieces, the kind that a journalist wishes he or she could do but doesn't have the space."

That is, if the news company has a robust business model to support it.

Gallup: Journalists, Politicians, Still Far Down in Ethics
Ethical Standards Survey
Re: Gallup: Journalists, Politicians, Still Far Down in 'Ethical' Standings

Perhaps the real story is what kind of a society we have. People don't like to buy cars, or get auto repairs, or deal with HMOs. The public views these professions as populated by people who will screw them.

As for journalists, a good part of the public's mistrust is the result of the negative attacks by the right in particular. But some of it is deserved. You have your Millers and Woodwards. Now that people access the Internet more easily, they've come to realize that the media censors the news, mostly through omission.

When they watch members of the media participating in pseudo news programs and yell-a-thons, they lose respect for them. And more and more interview shows follow the Larry King style of soft balls and no follow-up.

And the media is failing to protect its own. Look at what happened to Gary Webb. The big three, NYT, LAT, and WP all attacked him, to their everlasting shame. What does that tell reporters and editors? Reporters are killed and jailed in Iraq and in Palestine (by the Israelis) and there is little outcry.

And if a reporter in Iraq does a good job the administration will successfully get that person removed (the last two reports I saw by Logan of CBS directly contradicted Bush, I don't expect to see this fine reporter very often).

And of course the media allows people such as Ann Coulter air and print time. There seems to be a belief that as long as it is opinion it's all right to allow a columnist to tell lies and make outrageous claims. There is no common sense standard of the commentary being at least approximately true.

I had an uncle that was a reporter for local news and the police beat. He thought it was the greatest job in the world and one of great responsibility. So I still rate you higher than politicians and funeral directors (NYT and WP excepted).

Bob Reynolds
Orange Park, Fla.

Media Fell Short in Covering 9/11 'Report Card'
By Greg Mitchell
December 06, 2005

Has September 11 fatigue set in? A high-level report declares that the U.S., while fighting terrorists abroad, has not done nearly enough to keep us safe here at home. Surely it has dominated front pages all week? Not exactly.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 -- you remember them. Cost nearly 3,000 American lives and haunted the families of the victims. Traumatized the nation. Damaged our economy, led to a new cabinet department and the controversial Patriot Act. Gave the new U.S. president, who was foundering in the polls, almost unprecedented power and popularity. Led directly to a war against Afghanistan and overthrow of the government there. Led almost as directly to the invasion of Iraq, then a continuing war and occupation that has cost another 2,000-plus American lives and countless billions of dollars in expenditures.

September 11 is unquestionably the major American event in recent decades and the terrorist threat to our homeland is the issue of our time. So you would think that when the official and much-respected commissioners charged with studying the tragedy and offering advice on preventing another such attack released a report card on whether the government, four years later, is fully doing its job to keep us safe, it would deserve banner headlines and massive and continuing television coverage -- especially if the grades were poor, with five "Fs" and a dozen "Ds" out of 41 categories.

Well, such a report card was released on Monday -- this may be news to some of you -- and the media response was ... underwhelming.

Yes it made the front pages in some papers, got some favored spots on network news and provoked the usual cable news chitchat for a few hours or so. But Saddam Hussein's courtroom tantrums, the latest twist in the Tom DeLay case, and the first human face transplant, of all things, got just as much, or more, attention.

Does anyone know, for example, that the bi-partisan commission, led by Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean, gave the Bush administration -- which launched a war on Iraq largely in the name of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction -- a "D" on its efforts to secure WMD worldwide, calling this "the greatest threat to America's security"?

"If my children were to receive this report card they would have to repeat a year. We cannot afford to repeat this mistake," said Timothy J. Roemer, one of the commission members.

Yet an E&P survey of 40 major U.S. newspapers found that on Tuesday only six in this cross-section featured the story on their front pages. The San Francisco Chronicle had the most lavish treatment, with a huge replica of a school report card included. The others were: San Jose's Mercury-News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Houston Chronicle, on the other hand, carried the headline: "Concerns Over Face Transplant Grow."

It's true that the unhappiness of the commissioners started to leak out Sunday, and some papers, such as the Boston Globe, carried front-page dispatches on Monday. But most didn't put it on the front page either day, including The New York Times.

The new CBS News blog, Public Eye, reports, "All three networks featured packages on the news, but NBC's 'Nightly News' was the only broadcast to lead with the story. ABC's 'World News Tonight' and the CBS 'Evening News' led with stories about Saddam Hussein's trial."

But maybe I'm just over-sensitive about this. Like many in New York, I did lose a good friend in the attack on the World Trade Center.

In an online chat Tuesday at The Washington Post, a visitor asked the paper's longtime political reporter Tom Edsall, "The 9/11 report card obviously is big news here in D.C., but do you think that the average American is going to pay attention to this? And what effect will this have?"

Edsall replied: "I was surprised to see this morning that our competitor, The New York Times, played the story inside. Insofar as the press drives a story, that will diminish public reaction. I only saw the beginning of CBS News last night and don't recall an early mention of the 911 commission findings, which would also weaken the lasting power. The NYT has a wider national distribution than the Post. We gave the story top of the front page story, which I think is the correct play. All this is to say -- I don't know if the issue has legs or not. It should."

Has legs? What 9/11 wrought certainly does have legs -- from severe budget deficits to a stretched-thin military to a continuing war in Iraq. It's the height of hypocrisy for the administration to downplay the fresh concerns about readiness while declaring that we are in a worldwide and open-ended war on terror to allegedly make the homeland safe. Newspapers share in treating this as just another issue of-the-day.

The commissioners asked if maybe we need another wake-up call. Apparently, the answer is: yes.

***
READER FEEDBACK.

From Amanda Bennett, editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

I know you mention this in your story, but I don't think you have captured the importance of a change in the way we are doing business: It's important for us as newspapaers to realize that the story actually developed the day before.

We ran an A1 story on Kean's remarks -- that included virtually all of the information that came out the next day -- as our lead story on Monday. The next day we ran the details on A2....this is a practice we are trying to push.....our feeling is that in a televison age, we need to do one of three things:

1) get the news out earlier
2) provide better context
3) provide different and more compelling details

We are going to do much more of this. We are making a concerted effort to be much, much more disciplined about not just running the old-style news of the day in the lead position if it is something that a reader will pick up that morning and be able to say: I know that already -- either from radio, tv or the Internet.

This is going to force us to be much more on our toes, but in this case I believe we really were, by emphasizing the story the way we did the day earlier, and then providing context and detail the next day.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Mitchell ([email protected]) is editor of E&P.

Syndicated Columnist Admits Taking Money from Abramoff
Bandow, Syndicated Columnist, Admits Taking Money from Abramoff
By E&P Staff
Published: December 16, 2005 11:40 AM ET
NEW YORK

Copley columnist Doug Bandow resigned as senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute on Thursday after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing articles favorable to his clients.

Bandow told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s, with many payments at $2000 a column.

"It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it," Bandow said. A Cato spokesman told E&P that his tainted articles were being "scrubbed" from its Web site.

Abramoff also paid a second think-tanker, Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation who had a high profile in the recent Social Security debate.

Bandow did not disclose any Abramoff payments in any of his columns, or by Cato. Copley News Service did not immediately respond to inquiries about the future of Bandow's columns.

In an early reaction, Marty Kaplan, associate dean
of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, wrote at the Huffington Post blog today, "Move over, Armstrong Williams. Step aside, Maggie Gallagher. The gasbags-for-rent business has just gotten more competitive."

For years, "rumors have swirled of an underground opinion 'pay-for-play' industry in Washington in which think-tank employees and pundits trade their ability to shape public perception for cash," Business Week observed.

Neither Ferrara, nor Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, expressed any ethical qualms about the pay-for-play. Giovanetti said critics are applying a "naive purity standard" to the op-ed business, adding, "I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements."

Cato Communications Director Jamie Dettmer said the think-tank determined that Bandow "engaged in what we consider to be inappropriate behavior" and accepted his resignation.

Bandow confirmed receiving $2,000 for some pieces, but said it was "usually less than that amount." He added that he wrote all the pieces himself -- but with topics and information provided by Abramoff. He said he wouldn't write about subjects that didn't interest him.

Bandow wrote favorably about Abramoff's Indian tribal clients -- as well as another Abramoff client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands -- as far back as 1997. One Copley column saluted a Abramoff client tribe, the Mississippi Choctaws, for their entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, and commitment to free enterprise. "The Choctaws offer a model for other tribes," Bandow wrote.

He also wrote: "The BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] seems intent on keeping native Americans dependent. Still, critics will be more effective if they not only decry BIA inefficiency, but also help point the way to tribal independence. And the best way to do this is to highlight Indian entrepreneurship."

Dettmer told E&P, "We will be removing some articles in archives Doug wrote in connection with Indian tribes," about 12 to two dozen in all, with help from Bandow to identify them. His name has already been deleted in the "fellows" section of the Cato site. "We reacted promptly and speedily," Dettmer added, "we take the integrity of our institution very seriously....We considered Doug's actions were inappropriate...He's paid a very high price and we've lost a very good friend."

A Times Blockbuster
A Times Blockbuster
Posted Dec. 19, 2005.
By Rem Rieder, AJR's Editor and Senior Vice President.

The story on NSA eavesdropping was powerful and important, but the paper should have more fully explained why it held the piece for so long.
Thanks. They needed that.

The New York Times' exclusive about President Bush authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without seeking warrants was quite a bombshell. And a welcome one for the beleaguered Times.

The paper has been reeling for months from the fallout stemming from the Judith Miller brouhaha. Just two years after the painful Jayson Blair scandal, the World's Greatest Newspaper once again found itself under the microscope. And the view wasn't always pretty.

At the same time, it has watched as its competitors have broken major stories. The Washington Post had a terrific piece on the existence of CIA-run prisons for suspected terrorists in foreign countries. And the Los Angeles Times broke the news that the United States has been buying favorable coverage in the Iraqi press.

The NSA piece was huge - and important. It had instant impact, dooming the Bush Administration's efforts to have the Senate extend the Patriot Act on Friday. In this blog-saturated era, rife with predictions of the MSM's imminent demise, it was a forceful reminder of the power of journalism, old-fashioned journalism.

It also was a classic case of why those dreaded anonymous sources are sometimes necessary. You're never going to get on-the-record accounts in instances when much of the information is classified, as was the case both with the Times' NSA piece and the Post's story on the CIA prisons overseas.

The Times has been doing a commendable job when it uses information from confidential sources of explaining why it has done so. And it did in this case: "Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight."

But as always seems to be the case with the Times these days, the scoop was accompanied by a major dose of controversy. It was triggered by this 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."

The long delay, not surprisingly, set off thunder on the left. The liberal blog the Daily Kos proclaimed that the Times had "betrayed the American people" and called on the Times to apologize to "all of America for being complicit in this moral crime."

It's not unheard of for government officials to ask that information be withheld on national security grounds. Sometimes the requests are valid. Sometimes they are debatable, occasions when reasonable people can disagree. At the same time, there's an unhealthy history of "national security" being invoked to keep embarrassing information hidden from the public.

And unless you have first-hand knowledge, it's hard to assess the merits of the request.

Back in 1985, when I was at the Washington Post, I was involved in the coverage of a flurry of spy scandals. One piece focused on Ivy Bells, an operation to intercept underwater Soviet communications that had been compromised by NSA analyst Ronald Pelton.

Several times we were about to go with the story when then-NSA chief William Odom stopped by to express his national security concerns to then-Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. Several times the piece was delayed. Since Bradlee was one of the most aggressive editors I've ever known, it's hard to imagine that Odom didn't have some valid points.

And while at times it seemed like a year, the piece did get in the paper after a matter of weeks.

A yearlong delay is tough to understand. It's good that the Times mentioned it. But it would have done itself and its readers a favor if it had gone further. Referring to it without fully explaining it invites problems.

This seems like a classic case for a column by the editor or an editor's note of some kind explaining as thoroughly as possible why the piece was held and what changed to allow it to be published. This would be tricky, since it involves classified information, but the obstacles don't seem insurmountable.

Leveling with readers can make them more comfortable with your decisions. And uncertainty opens you up to attacks from those with political axes to grind.

Transparency is not only the right way to go, it's also the smart way to go.

Plunging Reputations
Plunging Reputations

"The image consultant said, 'You've got to stop wearing those turtlenecks. I think you've got to start showing some cleavage.' I told her I didn't think America was ready for that." -- ABC's Judy Muller, quoted by Amy Tenowich in a Los Angeles Daily News column on female journalists baring more skin.

It is so disgusting that the shallowness of news management still tries to use women's sexuality in the news broadcast. When will they ever learn?

BBB

Protecting sources
I'm of two opinions re protecting sources. For whistle blowers: YES! For law breakers: NO! The journalists got in trouble for protecting law-breaking sources. That should have been a red flag. ---BBB

Protecting Sources
Matt Cooper
June 2.2005

I was delighted to see that a bipartisan group of attorneys general from the states and the District of Columbia have filed a brief to the Supreme Court asking them to take the case that I've brought to the high court. Right now, I'm fighting a subpoena from the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case who would like me to reveal confidential sources for a piece I coauthored in 2003.

My piece didn't out Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Robert Novak, the columnist, had done that some days earlier. But my piece took note of the leaking, which may have constituted a crime, and suggested it was widespread. As you'll recall, Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times questioning one of the administration's rationales for going to war in Iraq--namely, that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire a kind of uranium ore in Africa. For over a year, with the exceptionally generous backing of my employer, Time, Inc, I've been fighting this subpoena in court and now we've asked the Supreme Court to take the case. The attorneys general didn't weigh the merits of my case but they did agree that the court should take it.

A lot of people were surprised when the Attorneys General stepped in. But if you look at the legal landscape, it's less surprising. Forty-nine states offer some form of legal protection for journalists who are protecting confidential sources--giving them a privilege akin to that afforded doctors and patients, clergymen and parishoners, and groups as disparate as licensed social workers. As the chief law enforcement officer in their states, the attorneys general know that these protections work well and are totally compatible with law enforcement. But my case is in FEDERAL court and the courts have been divided about whether there's protection under federal law. The attorneys general argued that in the absence of a federal privilege, the state laws essentially could be rendered moot. My hope is that the Supreme Court will take my case and sort out the confusion.

The bipartisan consesus extends to Congress. Right now, Congress is considering adopting a federal shield law that would allow journalists a degree of protection in keeping their confidences to sources. It, too, is bipartisan, sponsored by Sen. Richard Lugar and Rep. Mike Pence, both Indiana Republicans with many Democratic and Republican cosponsors. This is not a left-right issue. It's about whether citizens can get the information they need in order to be able to rule themselves.

Andy Rooney is so smart
Saturday, Jan 07

Rooney's Evening News Plan: Take Katie's $20 Million & Hire 40 New Reporters exchange from Friday's Larry King Live:

KING: No, OK. Who is going to replace Schieffer?

ROONEY: Well, maybe Schieffer, you know, he's embarrassing the hell out of CBS.

KING: He's doing good.

ROONEY: The ratings keep going up. And they keep talking about replacing him for somebody. I mean, you know, they're talking about giving Katie Couric $20 million. I say take that $20 million you could buy 40 reporters, 40 new reporters. You could give them each $250,000. I mean, there are hundreds of reporters who would jump at getting $250,000. So take that $20 million don't give to it Katie. Give it to a bunch of reporters and make CBS news the best news report in the world.

KING: Have them everywhere.

ROONEY: Have them everywhere. Open up the bureaus we used to have in Buenos Aires and Warsaw, Poland. We used to have them everywhere. Open those up again with that $20 million. Katie will be all right without it.

Call It By Name: Press Corruption
Call It By Name: Press Corruption
by R. J. Eskow
01.26.2006

Call it by name. The national press has been corrupted, by a combination of inducements and threats. Like many cases of corruption, it happened in such small increments that most of them don't realize themselves that they've been corrupted. But then, that's how it usually works in the real world. All this is well known, but it hasn't been named yet.

This phrase should enter the public dialog: "press corruption."

The Merriam-Webster definition of corruption is as good as any:

1 a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct.

The core moral principles of journalism are fearless dedication to the truth and a willingness to challenge the powerful in pursuit of that truth. Who can disagree that those principles, and the "integrity" and "virtue" that support them, are seriously "impaired" in today's media? Or that the talking heads on cable TV or the editors at the Washington Post aren't a "departure from the original" model of journalism represented by John Peter Zenger or Emile Zola?

Corruption doesn't always come in the form of million-dollar checks or lavish parties, Ambramoff/DeLay style. It can come in a thousand small inducements - "we'll make your life easier, friend" - and a thousand small threats. We can do this the easy way, or ...

That's exactly how it came to the Washington Press Corps. The media don't skew facts toward the Bush Administration because they're ideologically right-wing. They do it because they know that the cabal in power is ruthless and cruel when you make it angry, but indulgent (if patronizing) when you appease it. Play ball and the President will give you a nickname. Refuse, and Scotty will never call on you again.

The fact that dollars haven't changed hands doesn't mean the press isn't corrupt. It just means it can be bought cheap - for a good seat at the press conference, for the occasional exclusive, for not being frozen out like Helen Thomas.

There is no more clear-cut example of the press's corruption than than the spectacle of the scripted presidential press conference, where reporters repeat lines scripted by Rove for no greater reward than seeing their own faces on live television. That's what the national press corps has become: vain camera hounds selling their professional integrity for the next on-camera shot, the next exclusive, the next moment of attention from Scottie.

We get so damned angry every time the corruption shows its face again, as it did recently with the Washington Post, when Deborah Howell repeated lies about Democrats and Abramoff and editor Jim Brady pretended the real issue was surly commenters on the paper's blog. (And the sample of deleted comments in Jane's latest post are a powerful indictment of the Post's behavior.)

Occasional appearances of something resembling "spine" don't mean the press isn't still corrupt. It just means that when the President's popularity falls they sense weakness. Opportunism isn't courage, and refusing a mob boss because he's not in charge anymore isn't integrity.

I use the word "corruption" more out of sorrow than anger. My anger at each separate incident has given way to a recognition of the underlying problem. As one who's always valued the role of journalism in our society, these are sad days.

No point belaboring the obvious more than this - except to say that next time this corruption shows its face don't get mad, get organized. Those of us who respect the power of words - as the press once did - know that if you want something identified and changed, you must first give it a name.

Recognize each case like the WaPo incident as the symptom of an underlying disease - corruption - and call it by name. Do it again and again until the public begins to recognize that America has a corrupt press corps.

Then, and only then, will public perceptions begin to change.

S.E.C. Has Second Thoughts on Going After Reporters
S.E.C. Has Second Thoughts on Going After Reporters
Published: March 03, 2006
E & P

The Securities and Exchange Commission will adopt a new policy on subpoenaing journalists, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said Thursday in a move to resolve a controversy over the agency's recent demands for reporters' records.

Cox and the other four SEC commissioners decided unanimously at a closed-door meeting to issue ``clear principles'' to guide agency attorneys on media subpoenas within the next week or so, he told reporters in a meeting.

On Monday, after news reports had appeared on the matter, Cox took the unusual step of halting the agency's pursuit of subpoenas previously served on columnists for MarketWatch, Dow Jones Newswires and TheStreet.com in an investigation into allegations of stock manipulation. He suggested that SEC enforcement attorneys should have consulted him or other agency officials before issuing the subpoenas because of the sensitivity of ordering journalists to hand over records.

The SEC, an independent regulatory agency with only civil powers, rarely subpoenas journalists or news organizations.

"What didn't work in this case was that (the SEC public affairs office) wasn't apprised,'' Cox said Thursday. ``So we weren't well equipped to respond.''

Guidelines like those the SEC commissioners are contemplating ``can be very helpful as a statement to the troops,'' said Charles Davis, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and executive director of its Freedom of Information Center. ``They send a very clear message to the bureaucracy.''

The new policy will lay out the circumstances under which it is appropriate for journalists to be subpoenaed in SEC investigations when other means of getting the information are exhausted, Cox told reporters. It will not require agency attorneys to get approval for individual subpoenas from the commissioners but will call for consultation.

"This would not be Soviet Red Army rules,'' he said.

The two news organizations involved, Dow Jones & Co. (which owns MarketWatch) and TheStreet.com, had objected to the subpoenas, issued in early February, for telephone records, e-mails and other material related to online retailer Overstock.com.

The company has accused the research firm Gradient Analytics of issuing negative reports on the retailer in exchange for payments from a hedge fund seeking to profit from a drop in its stock price. Overstock has sued Gradient and the hedge fund in question, Rocker Partners; they deny any wrongdoing.

The three online columnists subpoenaed were Herb Greenberg of MarketWatch, Carol Remond of Dow Jones Newswires and James Cramer, co-founder and major shareholder of TheStreet.com, who writes a column for the financial news Web site and is the host of the ``Mad Money'' show on the CNBC cable network. All three have written columns that were critical of Overstock.com.

The Justice Department has guidelines that require prosecutors to get approval for individual subpoenas to journalists from the department's public affairs director and either the attorney general or deputy attorney general.

Such a stricter approach also ``would be appropriate'' for the SEC, said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

For the Justice Department, where the guidelines have been in effect for several decades, they ``have put the brakes on (issuance of subpoenas) and have provided for high-level scrutiny,'' Dalglish said.

Former anchor questions TV news priorities
I do miss Aaron Brown. He was a class act. ---BBB

If it bleeds, it leads

Helen Thomas: Lap Dogs of the Press
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/thomas

Lap Dogs of the Press
by HELEN THOMAS

[from the March 27, 2006 issue]

Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed--conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and "spin"--nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out--no questions asked.

Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: "When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble."

The naïve complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. One example: At President Bush's March 6, 2003, news conference, in which he made it eminently clear that the United States was going to war, one reporter pleased the "born again" Bush when she asked him if he prayed about going to war. And so it went.

After all, two of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had kept up a drumbeat for war with Iraq to bring down dictator Saddam Hussein. They accepted almost unquestioningly the bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the dubious White House rationale that proved to be so costly on a human scale, not to mention a drain on the Treasury. The Post was much more hawkish than the Times--running many editorials pumping up the need to wage war against the Iraqi dictator--but both newspapers played into the hands of the Administration.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his ninety-minute "boffo" statement on Saddam's lethal toxic arsenal on February 5, 2003, before the United Nations, the Times said he left "little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal" a so-called smoking gun or weapons of mass destruction. After two US special weapons inspection task forces, headed by chief weapons inspector David Kay and later by Charles Duelfer, came up empty in the scouring of Iraq for WMD, did you hear any apologies from the Bush Administration? Of course not. It simply changed its rationale for the war--several times. Nor did the media say much about the failed weapons search. Several newspapers made it a front-page story but only gave it one-day coverage. As for Powell, he simply lost his halo. The newspapers played his back-pedaling inconspicuously on the back pages.

My concern is why the nation's media were so gullible. Did they really think it was all going to be so easy, a "cakewalk," a superpower invading a Third World country? Why did the Washington press corps forgo its traditional skepticism? Why did reporters become cheerleaders for a deceptive Administration? Could it be that no one wanted to stand alone outside Washington's pack journalism?

Tribune Media Services editor Robert Koehler summed it up best. In his August 20, 2004, column in the San Francisco Chronicle Koehler wrote, "Our print media pacesetters, the New York Times, and just the other day, the Washington Post, have searched their souls over the misleading pre-war coverage they foisted on the nation last year, and blurted out qualified Reaganesque mea culpas: 'Mistakes were made.'"

All the blame cannot be laid at the doorstep of the print media. CNN's war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, was critical of her own network for not asking enough questions about WMD. She attributed it to the competition for ratings with Fox, which had an inside track to top Administration officials.

Despite the apologies of the mainstream press for not having vigilantly questioned evidence of WMD and links to terrorists in the early stages of the war, the newspapers dropped the ball again by ignoring for days a damaging report in the London Times on May 1, 2005. That report revealed the so-called Downing Street memo, the minutes of a high-powered confidential meeting that British Prime Minister Tony Blair held with his top advisers on Bush's forthcoming plans to attack Iraq. At the secret session Richard Dearlove, former head of British intelligence, told Blair that Bush "wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The Downing Street memo was a bombshell when discussed by the bloggers, but the mainstream print media ignored it until it became too embarrassing to suppress any longer. The Post discounted the memo as old news and pointed to reports it had many months before on the buildup to the war. Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley decided that the classified minutes of the Blair meeting were not a "smoking gun." The New York Times touched on the memo in a dispatch during the last days leading up to the British elections, but put it in the tenth paragraph.

All this took me back to the days immediately following the unraveling of the Watergate scandal. The White House press corps realized it had fallen asleep at the switch--not that all the investigative reporting could have been done by those on the so-called "body watch," which travels everywhere with the President and has no time to dig for facts. But looking back, they knew they had missed many clues on the Watergate scandal and were determined to become much more skeptical of what was being dished out to them at the daily briefings. And, indeed, they were. The White House press room became a lion's den.

By contrast, after the White House lost its credibility in rationalizing the pre-emptive assault on Iraq, the correspondents began to come out of their coma, yet they were still too timid to challenge Administration officials, who were trying to put a good face on a bad situation.

I recall one exchange of mine with press secretary Scott McClellan last May that illustrates the difference, and what I mean by the skeptical reporting during Watergate.

Helen: The other day, in fact this week, you [McClellan] said that we, the United States, are in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history?

Scott: No. We are...that's where we are currently.

Helen: In view of your credibility, which is already mired...how can you say that?

Scott: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically elected governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Helen: Were we invited into Iraq?

Scott: There are democratically elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, but we are there today.

Helen: You mean, if they asked us out, that we would have left?

Scott: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments.

Helen: I'm talking about today, too.

Scott: We are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

Helen: Did we invade those countries?

At that point McClellan called on another reporter.

Those were the days when I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore.

I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.

It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.