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.
Adding a Price Tag
American Journalism Review
December/January 2006
Adding a Price Tag
By Lori Robertson, former AJR managing editor.
The New York Times joins the ranks of news organizations charging for some of their online content. Is paying for Internet news inevitable, or will the Web's "information wants to be free" culture prevail?
On September 1, 2004, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, dared to defy a Web-born dogma few want to cross: It started charging people to read the paper online.
Seven whole dollars every month. Unless you were a faithful print subscriber ?- then you got everything free.
Ken Sands, online publisher for the Spokesman-Review, was quickly branded a "greedy bastard" in many of the 300 e-mails he received ?- "really nasty e-mails," he notes ?- from people who proclaimed that all they wanted to do was check their hometown news, and they weren't going to pay seven bucks to do it. Online audience growth ground to a screeching halt. "Our site traffic in the first eight months of 2004 was up 42 percent year over year," Sands says. "The minute September 1 rolls around, our growth rate went to zero."
But the bad news only lasted about a quarter. A year later, the August 2005 traffic was 50 percent more than the August 2004 numbers. The 100,160-circulation paper has about 1,000 online subscribers (Sands' goal was 1,000 to 1,500), a revenue stream it didn't have before and happier advertisers. "One unanticipated consequence is that our local online advertisers are getting more bang for their buck," Sands says. Before the paid model, about a third of spokesmanreview.com's visitors didn't live in the area; the subscription fee drove those readers away. The local advertisers, he says, aren't wasting a third of their Web ad budgets any longer.
It's been an online subscription success story, and the impetus behind it was the same worry facing most print outlets today: Readers were giving up their print subscriptions to get the news free online. Even newspapers that say they aren't seeing much of this cannibalism from the freebie Web site face the dilemma of how to maximize revenues as we move toward a more-electronic news world ?- or possibly, one day in the future, a digital-only one. Sure, maybe the baby boomers psychologically can't let go of a paper product when nifty new devices come on the market, but each subsequent generation can: They're not even getting into the ink-on-paper habit to begin with. Newspapers in the coming decades could still be a primary source of news ?- albeit not so much in "paper" form ?- but can they stay in business if they give their work away? Is paying for it inevitable?
This is one aspect of the media about which few want to make definitive declarations. "If I knew the answer, I'd be making a million dollars instead of talking to you," says Rick Edmonds, a researcher and writer at the Poynter Institute who has written about the business of online news. "Content is very expensive to produce..and the notion that you're just going to go on forever giving it away is pretty problematic. So to some extent, at least, my reaction is, it makes a lot of sense to try something."
The "something" that Edmonds refers to is the New York Times' launch of TimesSelect, a $49.95 per year Web deal that makes the paper's op-ed and other columnists off-limits to non-print subscribers who won't hand over their credit card numbers, and gives the Select folks extra services, such as the ability to download up to 100 articles a month from the Times' archives free of charge.
Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations at the New York Times Co., has heard plenty of criticism of the Times' decision to put the columnists behind a paid wall and plenty of predictions that this move is going to fail miserably. But Nisenholtz is of the mind that paying for something is going to have to be a part of online news eventually. The question of whether newspaper sites have to charge to survive, he says, "has been debated from the moment that all of us started out putting our products online. I would say that ultimately the answer to that question is yes."
The early results for the Times were encouraging: In mid-November, two months after TimesSelect's launch, about 270,000 people had signed up for it. About half of them ?- not being print subscribers ?- paid the 50 bucks for the service.
Nisenholtz says making money from more than one source is simply good business ?- and other online executives agree. "You do need some form of a mixed revenue model in order to have healthy economics," he says, adding that that's what the Times is doing. "How [paying for content] happens and in what markets and for what newspapers and in what time frame..and how it relates to the AP and what the role of blogging is and independent content, I mean, all of that has to be factored in... The ultimate judge is the consumer. They're either going to pay or they're not going to pay."
Some of the journalists interviewed for this story worry that the industry has devalued news by bandying it about gratis for so long ?- while others aren't sure news had much monetary value to begin with. Whatever media sites offer for sale has to be unique enough, or special enough ?- "differentiated" is the business term of choice ?- to prompt people to open their pocketbooks. And whether it is or isn't, can online advertising revenues grow enough to keep news organizations afloat?
For Ken Sands, putting a price tag on the Web site paid off. Spokesmanreview.com only charges for the content that's in the print edition; Web extras, such as breaking news and 25 staff-written blogs, are free. (In fact, such unpaid offerings helped spokesmanreview.com win the general excellence award for medium sites from the Online News Association this year. NYTimes.com garnered the prize for large sites.) But Sands wouldn't recommend his model to everyone. His paper offers local news in a noncompetitive market. Readers pay for it because "it" can't be had anywhere else. For papers the size of the New York Times or the Washington Post, competing with CNN and USA Today, Sands asks, "how could any one of those charge for its content without just chasing people to the other sites?"
Requiring online subscriptions isn't something that Caroline Little, CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, wants to try right now ?- "every number that we run, it just doesn't make sense," she says. But the Times' move has sparked lots of interest. "They're sort of the first to go," Little says, "and people are watching very, very carefully."
L. Gordon Crovitz, senior vice president of Dow Jones & Co. and president of its electronic publishing group, says there was never doubt in anyone's mind at the company that the Wall Street Journal's Web site would require users to pay. Part of the thinking could be attributed to the company's long history of delivering news electronically for a fee through the Dow Jones Newswires. But also, Crovitz says, the company thought "it was untenable over the long term to have a paid subscription model for a newspaper while giving away the content for the newspaper and much more on a Web site."
The Wall Street Journal Online's subscribers number 764,000 (up 9 percent from the third quarter last year), paying $99 per year, or $49 if they also get the print edition. But the Journal is unique ?- differentiated, if you will. Crovitz lists the advantages the site has over other newspapers' online offerings: the brand and its unique business and financial news; more than a thousand articles available daily from the Dow Jones Newswires; and the ability to charge more for advertising, an advantage that's really the result of having a subscription model that gives advertisers lots of information about a loyal audience.
Other online executives point out that it doesn't hurt that some of the Online Journal's readers are businesspeople whose employers pick up the tab. Still, Crovitz says publishers are changing their thinking about the Web, believing it's important to have subscription revenues. "I'm certain that more and more newspapers and magazines and traditional news publishers will look for ways to generate subscription revenues," he says. "I think many have discovered that it is untenable to charge in print and give away content online."
Vin Crosbie, managing partner of Digital Deliverance LLC, a new-media consulting firm, says of newspaper sites: "They're finally waking up to the fact that they've got to get a business model here." But Crosbie doesn't think paying for online news is inevitable. Some people aren't willing to pay for news at all anymore, he says, citing the "avalanche" of information the average consumer can access. "That's driven the value of news down."
It's not just the evil free Web sites; there are plenty of free print products these days, like those ever-popular minipapers that big metro dailies, among others, are pushing (see "Hip ?- and Happening," April/May).
Crosbie does believe the industry will see micropayments (tiny amounts charged per story) in the future, once the software and credit card companies come up with an easy way for consumers to use them. But the problem, he says, is in producing something that can bring in the money. "The issue is not whether we can find a payment technology, but more a case of whether we can come up with a product people are willing to pay for."
Rob Runett, director of electronic media communications at the Newspaper Association of America, maintains a list of newspapers that charge for content ?- there are 44 that he knows of ?- whether it's the Dallas Morning News' CowboysPlus.com or the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's main content. Runett has not seen a big move in the paid-model direction. The industry's thinking is more, "we have audiences coming to our site now, what can we do to keep them as loyal as possible?" he says.
As Runett notes, "When you do put up a wall in front of people, there is a very harsh reaction." Consumers aren't accustomed to paying much for news, period. Paid circulation is a small percentage of the print paper's overall revenue as well. "In that sense, people's expectations of media [have] been pretty low cost," Runett says.
Historically in the print newspaper world, says Crovitz, "we've said it's very odd that for the price of a cup of coffee, you could get a newspaper." But today it's difficult to do that, even if you eschew Starbucks for 7-Eleven. The coffee industry has figured out a way to charge more, he says, and the newspaper industry hasn't. "But the Internet has been the greatest offender of a common-sense business model."
If publishers have highly differentiated content, it's still a significant challenge to suddenly ask for money after spending years "devaluing the brand" by making it available free, Crovitz says.
While the New York Times used to give away the words of such big-name brands as Maureen Dowd, Thomas L. Friedman and Frank Rich, the paper may have gained immeasurable value by getting its columnists in the hands and inboxes of people around the world, people who won't necessarily spend money for that access.
Plus, there's the exposure bloggers give to op-ed pieces and traffic they drive to the site. But Martin Nisenholtz says he doesn't "see that as a huge issue at this point." He and Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of the New York Times, point out that while the columns are part of TimesSelect, scant attention has been paid to the services the company has packaged in this deal. Most valuable among them: access to the archives.
Nisenholtz says the Times' online users have been asking for more seamless access to the archives for 10 years. Some wanted it to be free, of course. "But that's just not realistic." TimesSelect also gives subscribers advance access to weekend features; use of the News Tracker, an e-mail alert system matched to readers' interests; and Times File, a tool to save articles and pages from the Times' and other Web sites.
Kinsey Wilson, vice president and editor in chief at USAToday.com, says he thinks that offering services that people value, rather than content, will be the key to prompting them to pay. "As audience behavior changes and with that as ad dollars shift and as the Web allows others to get into businesses that were once the dominant preserve of newspapers..we may find that newsgathering as a discrete isolated function is not by itself a sustainable business. On the other hand, it never was," Wilson says, adding that television networks depend on entertainment programs and newspapers use classifieds and consumer services to attract audiences.
"But I think all that means is we need to find some combination of news and other services that come together to support the newsgathering function," he says. Wilson elaborated in an e-mail to AJR: "It's evident people will make substantial outlays for certain services, given the appeals of things like dial-up Internet access (AOL), cable, enhanced phone services, mobile offerings, broadband, VOIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] and so on."
Wilson, however, sees online content moving away from the paid model. "I think both within the realm of news, and if you look at what's going on with music and other forms of information that are being shared on the Internet, the tendency is toward cheaper or altogether free offerings," he says.
The business model of choice, Wilson says, is an advertising-supported one.
Newspaper companies have been thrilled with the recent online advertising growth, touting the double-digit numbers. Poynter's Rick Edmonds wrote in a column that Web advertising spending has grown 30 percent to 40 percent in the past few years at mid-size and larger papers. (But remember, online ad budgets started at zero not that long ago.) Edmonds used recent newspaper industry statistics to project that online revenues wouldn't equal or surpass print revenues at such papers until 2018 ?- if the online ad growth continued at this rate.
In an October report, Morgan Stanley calculated that online advertising spending in 2004 averaged $145 per U.S. household with Internet access, while spending on newspaper ads was $674 per newspaper home. If readers do make more of a shift from print products to online or digital news, the Internet ad dollars would need to multiply at a much faster pace.
Despite the current disparity in spending, Doug Feaver, former executive editor of washingtonpost.com, says "it's certainly feasible" that advertising alone could support the online news business. "Television has survived that way forever."
"Everyone likes to have a little diversification in terms of where the revenue streams are," says Feaver, who teaches online journalism at Ithaca College. "As you go forward into this new world of electronics, I think [not having subscription revenues] worries the traditionalists," who are accustomed to that additional flow of income. The question is, "if you're giving something away that you used to charge for, are you destroying your business?... There's less concern over that than there was."
Even Dow Jones doesn't believe solely in a paid subscription approach. Beyond OpinionJournal.com, which gives away Wall Street Journal editorial page content, the company offers free sites such as CareerJournal.com and RealEstateJournal.com, and it got a big boost in online traffic by acquiring MarketWatch in January 2005 (see "Dotcom Bloom," June/July). Internet acquisitions are certainly becoming part of big media companies' business models: Recent ones include the New York Times Co.'s purchase of About.com and Gannett/Knight Ridder/Tribune Co.'s stake in Topix.net.
While the Journal offers business news, Crovitz says Dow Jones bought MarketWatch to get into the personal investor news market. But the purchase also gives the company a larger online audience across its collection of Web sites, which leads to higher advertising rates. "We have subscription," Crovitz says, but we "also have as much scale as anyone" serving this audience. (Translation for the non-online-executives out there: An awful lot of people visit their Web sites.)
Dow Jones Online's sites attract 9 million unique visitors a month, he says, and that level of audience is very important in "interests-based targeting." That's the Big-Brother-like ?- and highly lucrative ?- way of knowing that someone's reading a car review and then popping an ad for a Lexus on his or her screen, not right that minute in a too-obvious way, but a few page views later.
Caroline Little at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive says her company is starting to use that kind of ad targeting technology on its sites, too. Little says that while classified and certain types of display advertising are doing very well, it's still a challenge to explain the benefits of Internet advertising to local businesses. "Radio's still very strong in communities. We haven't seen the kind of migration [to the Web] that we've seen with other advertising," she says, noting that about 4 percent of all ad spending goes to the Internet right now.
The ad market may be a challenge, but Little doesn't see a subscription model saving the day. "Advertising is very strong and has been very successful in helping us move forward," she says. "What is so critical to us right now is growing our audience."
Washingtonpost.com, which attracts about 80 percent of its visitors from outside the Washington, D.C., area, launched registration in the spring of 2004. In order to read articles on the site, users create passwords and enter their names, addresses, birth dates and job titles. (NAA's Runett maintains a list of about 100 newspaper sites that require registration.) Those tiny pieces of demographic information are very valuable for the advertisers, says Little, who views registration as the price of admission. There are liars, of course ?- the Post has readers who claim to live in Antarctica ?- but Little believes there'll be less of that as people get more and more used to registration. Advertisers need to get more used to the online world as well. Runett points out that the ad rates online are very low, "unnecessarily low I would say in some cases." And Edmonds recalls the wary comments of a woman from Best Buy, talking to newspaper folks at an NAA event. Research shows most of the people who come into the store are familiar with the company's Sunday newspaper inserts, she said.
Such advertisers are interested in newspapers continuing to be successful, Edmonds says. "They're not real gung ho on trying to implement that online."
As far back as 1981, Roger F. Fidler was talking about ways newspapers could be distributed digitally. In the early '90s, he was carrying out his work in a lab in Colorado funded by Knight Ridder, developing an electronic newspaper to be read on a tablet-like device. He called it a "personal information appliance." Fidler predicted that this device would begin replacing newspapers by 2001 and be in the hands of half of the nation's newspaper readers by 2010.
The industry was skeptical, and it didn't happen ?- at least not the first part of his forecast. "I had expected the display technology would develop faster than it did," Fidler says. But the 2010 prediction is "still a possibility."
Fidler ?- who jokes that his tombstone will probably contain something that says "the tablet guy" ?- has continued to work on a format for a digital newspaper that would present news and ads in the same serendipitous way as the print product, something that looks like the paper but with hyperlinks, video and sound. The concept now has a much cooler name ?- eMprint, short for Electronic Media Print ?- and Fidler is testing it as director of technology initiatives for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Like most of those interviewed for this story, Fidler doesn't believe print will completely vanish, but he doesn't think it will be the dominant delivery mechanism, either. "Over the next 10 or 20 years, digital products will be the major source of revenue and profit for the industry," he says.
His experiments at Missouri provide some hopeful signs for the digital newspaper industry. In the spring the Columbia Missourian, a community newspaper that's affiliated with the journalism school, offered a Sunday eMprint edition to about 5,000 people for 10 weeks. Not only did readers find it an enjoyable way to read the paper (and most were reading it on laptops), Fidler says, but "we sold out all the advertising in the eMprint edition during the field test... It was actually a profitable product right out of the door."
On the Web, Fidler explains, advertisers feel their ads get lost easily, or are ignored by readers. eMprint is more like a magazine. "People are more receptive to whatever they encounter as they turn the page," he says, be it an ad or a collection of stories. The Columbia Missourian relaunched eMprint in September, producing a free Wednesday and Sunday electronic edition, available at columbiamissourian.com/emprint.
Fidler believes digital editions of newspapers would need to be sold at much lower prices than the paper products ?- people know there are no newsprint or distribution costs, after all ?- but he sees some subscription fees on the horizon. "I don't have any magic solutions to the problem," he says. "But I think the days of giving away all of the content of the newspapers on the Web are numbered."
Another futurist, Russ Wilcox, chief executive of E Ink Corp., predicts an auspicious outcome for newspapers as well. E Ink has developed a paper-like video screen, and in a washingtonpost.com chat in October, Wilcox said newspapers would give their subscribers this device free, a new-world scenario that could spring up by 2015. He touted one clear advantage to this type of delivery system: "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
March 2, 2006
Former anchor questions TV news priorities
By CHRIS CONRAD
Mail Tribune
Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown had an epiphany following his network's saturation coverage of the 2001 murder of actor Robert Blake's wife.
The crowd that packed SOU's Rogue River Room Wednesday night listened as Brown recalled shuffling home at 3 a.m. after a four- hour tour of duty reporting in excruciating detail a low-level celebrity shooting on the day four Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan. His wife was waiting up for him with only one question: Why?
"I am sure there were other things we could've reported that night," Brown said.
And so began his lecture titled "Is TV news fulfilling its promise?" Brown served as the keynote speaker for this year's Thomas W. Pyle First Amendment Forum.
Brown, who described cable news anchors as "highly paid piece(s) of meat," began his TV career as a reporter and anchor at KING-TV News in Seattle. In December 1991, he joined ABC news to anchor "World News Now," the network's overnight newscast. In 1993 he joined "ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings." In the summer of 2001 he was hired by CNN to launch "NewsNight with Aaron Brown." He has received several journalism awards, including an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks.
He suggested his eventual demise at CNN resulted from criticizing the network's obsession with lurid celebrity gossip while short-changing meaningful news.
He compared such "breaking news" to heroin ?- it's good for a while, but will eventually make you feel used and dirty.
"The news in this country is a business," he added. "You might not like to think of it that way, but it is."
He admitted that cable news reporters and editors have failed viewers by not telling stories that are important, that truly matter.
"Cable indulges too often in what amounts to mud wrestling ?- just two people shouting at each other," he said.
However, he didn't let the casual TV viewer off easily. Because the news is a business, he argued, it is only giving consumers what they want.
"In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it's not enough to say you want serious news, you have to watch it," he said.
He likened a typical TV night for Americans as a political act where consumers vote with their remote controls.
According to Brown, CNN spent a fortune covering the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After two weeks, he said, ratings fell to normal levels. The Fox news channel channeled their dollars into a story about American teenager Natalee Holloway disappearing in Aruba. Fox, of course, cleaned up in ratings and revenue.
Brown offered one remedy for fixing the news. He argued that during any given day there are only between 6 and 10 stories worth reporting.
"We should focus on reporting these really important stories well instead of constant breaking news," he said.
The Thomas W. Pyle First Amendment Forum is produced by SOU's Department of Communication. The Forum is presented through a grant from The Ashland Daily Tidings, with support from the SOU School of Arts and Letters.
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.
