You Know You're a Wussy Press Corps When...

McClellan's on The Daily Show next Monday. Since Jon Stewart's one of the few media members who never did abate in his criticism, I'll be eager to see how he handles McClellan. Does he focus on the media or does he focus on McClellan's enabling? I think McClellan has been on before, and it'd be interesting to see how past interviews went, this future interview in mind.

James, any thoughts on why the press had no trouble making a big ruckus president Clinton's extramarital affair, by contrast?

I think there's a key point you're missing here: the role of the elite punditry, the "Villagers". They were for the war from the beginning and care more about presidential bj's than things like wars anyway.

I think it really is that simple.

Hear, hear. Amazingly the media (or at least Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams) are pretending they disagree:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/28/gibson/index.html

James-

Did you read the link Crust provided? Do you agree with Charlie Gibson that the media's responsibility is just to ask questions, not debate?

@TomT: A couple points. First, I think McClellan is focusing more on the failure of straight reporting rather than punditry vis a vis WMDs, the case for war, etc. I'm not saying that punditry is irrelevant, but that the problem in question here is in the paucity of skeptical reporting that would have pointed out the uncertainties in the case for war. Second, I think you give the press, in a way, credit for more idealism than I do, in the sense of being determined to push their agenda and damn what the public thinks. I think American journalism is very much led by public opinion (or rather by its perception of public opinion, which can be wrong).

Why did the press go BJ crazy, by contrast? You could write a book about this, but a couple relevant thoughts offhand. (1) Though the part of media criticism I am most leery of is telling reporters how to do their jobs, face it--it was *easier*. It was a matter of covering the public proceedings of a legal investigation. Compare that with ascertaining the status of WMDs that may or may not have been held by an extremely secretive regime. That takes more effort, more manpower, more $$$--and you might still get it wrong at the end of the day. (2) I don't think that the press thought they would be "punished" by their audience, in terms or ratings, revenue, subscriptions, etc., for going whole-hog on Monicagate. Were they wrong? Not in the short term, anyway. And as in so many fields, there are few incentives for the decision-makers to think long-term.

I don't pretend this to be a comprehensive explanation, though.

@Crust: Short answer? I think it's a false choice at minimum. If you're a pundit/columnist/opinion writers, of course, your job IS to debate. If you're a reporter, your job is to ask questions of the administration and to ask questions of *those other people who ARE debating with the administration.*

Oops, sorry, I was actually responding to Smedley.

Just to put into perspective how mendacious Gibson's remarks were, imagine it was he, instead of Stephanoupolis, interviewing Rove Sunday. Rove's non-denial denial of "involvement" in the Siegleman case would have been unchallenged.

Or, how about this:

Charlie Gibson: "Senator McCain, I understand your chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, was a lobbyist for UBS. Is that true?

Senator McCain: "Yes, but he has de-registered as a lobbyist."

Charlie Gibson: "Thank you, Senator McCain."

A real journalist: "But, Senator, isn't Mr. Gramm still an officer with UBS?"

Senator McCain: "Get off of my lawn!"

If you're a reporter, your job is to ask questions of the administration and to ask questions of *those other people who ARE debating with the administration.*

I think you're saying the same thing as Gibson: that the reporter's job is to merely write down the differing opinions, with no attempt at analysis of those opinions.

In other words, stenography.

@Paul: If that's what it sounds like, I didn't express myself well. It sounded to me like Gibson was saying that to do more than taking down the administration's answers to questions--i.e., stenography--amounted to "debating" them. Certainly analysis is part of the journalist's job; otherwise, you're just doing "on the other hand, some say the world is flat" equivalence.

On the question of whether Iraq had WMDs (which was a little trickier before the war than ascertaining whether or not the world was flat)one thing you'd need to do to do any sort of informed analysis is to talk to people who aren't pushing the administration's case—opponents, independent experts, etc. Particularly since I would wager relatively few journalists themselves are, or consider themselves, WMD experts. (And of course one of the few who did, Judy Miller, delivered some of the most flawed reporting/""analysis" on Iraq's WMD potential.) My point was that that hardly constitutes "debating"; it's the sort of skeptical reporting you should be doing on an issue where there was so much conjecture and guesstimation.

@JP. You write:

First, I think McClellan is focusing more on the failure of straight reporting rather than punditry vis a vis WMDs, the case for war, etc. I'm not saying that punditry is irrelevant, but that the problem in question here is in the paucity of skeptical reporting that would have pointed out the uncertainties in the case for war.

James, I believe that the straight reporting takes its cues from the punditry in many ways, certainly in terms of which stories get emphasized. I think it's hard to argue otherwise, honestly.

See Greg Mitchell's book that documents this.

James-

The question for those of us who were watching this unfold is why Knight-Ridder was ignored by the teevee people, why as MM has up today, Ted Kennedy's speech against the war was ignored (and large associated protests), why Bill Keller frontpaged Judy, and put the debunking counter stories on a17.

As print journalists I've emailed have frequently replied, the stories were written. But they did not make the teevee. And, still, the spectrum of permissible opinion among the pundits starts with Greg Beck and Bill Kriston, and ends at the TNR.

This is still true. O'Hanlon is still labeled liberal, while Scott Ritter is still banished to the wilderness.

Re: punditry - irresponsible pundits who regurgitate party talking points are dangerous when unleashed on an ignorant populace. I think that TomT is right that the more vicious and misleading the pundits get, the more frightened the actual journalists are of asking tough questions.

However, that does NOT excuse the seriously wussy job that journalists did in covering that whole mess. I was just as frustrated at that point as I am now, I was furious how the press just layed down and rolled over to let Bush do whatever the hell he wanted, and furious that more people weren't furious, that more people weren't asking questions, and that the political and climate was so insane that the freaking Dixie Chicks came under major fire just for not supporting the war. I mean, that's how thought control works in societies like ours ("democracies") - it isn't that the press is forbidden to speak the truth, there's just major political/social pressure not to deviate from the pack, so folks don't do it. And that's just scary how easily that happens.

I think that TomT is right that the more vicious and misleading the pundits get,

I don't think it's about them being vicious, it's about their strange view of what's important and what's not. They think bj's from interns are more important than trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of deaths, and that attitude filters down to the straight reporters.

Poll after poll showed that the public didn't care much about Clinton's affair and that it is very upset about the Iraq war. Yet we have David Broder insisting that Clinton should have resigned over his extramarital affair while Bush is due for a political comeback. You can't tell me that doesn't have an influence given that Broderites on the teevee pretty much 24/7.

Who cares about whether the press did their job then? Now is now and we have someone who was close to the administration saying the president and his administration purposefully lied to the American people and consequently thousands of people have died. Isn't it time for impeachment? I am outraged that our president has not been held accountable for breaking our country's laws. When is enough, enough?

And so James P., this is not after the fact, yet you choose to write about the messenger(s) rather than the message and so we go around debating what the press is supposed to do and not do. Perhaps that's your job but have you noticed that the emperor has no clothes?

@reed - I completely echo your first paragraph. Enough is enough, now that we have some hindsight perspective there should be some serious accountability. I'd support throwing Bush-Cheney and the whole lot of the folks from the administration in prison for fraud, conspiracy, and murder, but impeachment would be nice too.

However - the second paragraph is a stretch, considering that you seem to be criticizing a blog about Television and media for looking at this issue from a Television and media angle. I'm just glad that there is room at Tuned In to talk about this stuff at all, and commenters can take the discussion in whatever direction desired. There are other bloggers who are actually supposed to be covering political stuff (from political angles), although I have to note that their discussions tend to be a lot less civil than the ones here!!

"it's about their strange view of what's important and what's not. They think bj's from interns are more important than trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of deaths, and that attitude filters down to the straight reporters."

@TomT - "Important" isn't the word I would use, because I don't think that importance is something that matters as much as 1) what will sell and 2) what won't piss off corporate sponsors. Those seem to be the priorities. BJs by interns are scandalous, they get people riled up about something that doesn't affect corporate interests. Whereas war and death are industries, enriching powerful people and corporations and justifying the military industrial complex. I would still say that the more vicious the pundits get, the less people (viewers, journalists) feel comfortable stepping outside the box - because the pundits are setting a lot of the tone for the dialogue. When pundits are smacking down dissent, their viewers become increasingly (and subtley) disempowered, because the dissent smackdown becomes normalized, and they pay it forward. Without people asking questions, it makes it that much easier for journalists to avoid asking tough questions. Its all a circle, I guess, and everything feeds everything else, but the dissent-stamping of pundits definitely helps sets the tone for the actual journalists.

I guess I should also add that I think this is a very sharp piece all in all by Jimmy P.

it's not about ideology or corporate political dictates; it's about following the money.

I think money was involved, certainly, but that's not all of it:

WALTER ISAACSON: We'd put it on the air and by nature of a 24 hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.

BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?

WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'

Why do they decide what is "un-American," what I should or shouldn't hear?

Actually, you might ask Walter Isaacson about this yourself. Looks like he works for Time ; )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Isaacson

I think it is part ideological, in the sense that I am healthily skeptical about the priorities of the "big people in corporations" that Isaacson describes. There's a good chance that that "big person" has very different priorities than I do, or that my neighbor does. Does that "big corporate" person have kids that will be going to Iraq? Very, very doubtful. Does that person have enough foreign policy expertise to know the importance of a story on cable news? I bet he thinks he does. (In fact, judging from the way things went, I bet he was just brimming with false confidence...)

J.J.: I'm not sure I follow. Doesn't the Isaacson quote bolster the argument that money (in this case advertising money) drove media decisions? I mean, yes, in this instance ideology is involved: the _advertiser's_ ideology. But the pressure implicitly put to bear on CNN is financial. Here, Isaacson is not thinking, "We should do XYZ because I support the war." He's thinking, "We should do XYZ because this advertiser supports the war."

BTW, you might be interested in reading the review I did of last year's Moyers' special on the press and Iraq. There I said that I thought a lot of Moyers' criticisms were on the nose but that--to be a broken record--he underplayed the role of economic anxiety in the media's decision-making. (Though I do reference the Isaacson quote there):

http://time-blog.com/tuned_in/2007/04/im_not_generally_in_the.html

You may or may not agree, but it goes into a little more detail about my thinking on this issue.

Thanks for answering my comment, James.

I agree that economic anxiety is big. Eric Alterman had a piece on the economic pressures on the news business a little while back:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all

The essay focuses on newspapers instead of TV, but as I understand it, newspapers usually lead on important stories--especially the complex ones.

It's interesting to think hypothetically what would have happened if we had more media diversity--three or four Knight Ridders instead of one.

However, I do think the people who make the executive decisions can have certain ideological mindsets, even if they want to think they don't. If you don't know anyone with kids in the military, and you have a certain optimism about what the military and its technology can do (something I bet many heads of corporations would have), and you have certain ideas about who is respectable and worth listening to and who is not. You could complain that this last item isn't about ideology, but that's what Slate's Gary Kamiya calls it:

[T]he third and final area where journalism failed in the aftermath of 9/11 [is] ideology. Evaluating why America was attacked required journalists to learn about the history of the Arab/Muslim world -- and not just skim one of Bernard Lewis' tendentious articles discounting Arab grievances. Evaluating how dangerous Saddam Hussein really was required knowledge of the contemporary Middle East -- not just a quick read of Kenneth Pollack's "The Threatening Storm," which argued that Saddam posed so great a threat to America that war was necessary. Assessing Bush's entire "war on terror" required a dispassionate exploration of terrorism itself -- an understanding that terrorism is essentially a form of asymmetrical warfare, that it often succeeds by provoking an overreaction, that it can be waged in the service of legitimate goals, and that most terrorists are not cowards or madmen -- free of 9/11 emotionalism. Indeed, every one of these issues needed to be looked at completely objectively, without sacred cows of any kind.

None of this happened...

Could this be partly because they were economically pressured to outdo Fox? One of Kristina Borjesson interviewees says this in her book "Feet to the Fire." But there you have to consider the Republican machine that built Fox, and the alternative right-leaning media and policy establishment that helped feed Fox its sexed up coverage. (See Eric Alterman's discussion of the "counterestablishment" in the piece above.)

So anyway, I think economics is certainly there, but there's a lot more going on...

Good grief what a nonsensical post. The truth was beyond reach because the White house spokesperson was not candid or had the balls to do so??? :)

You had to make $$$ James so you lost the ability to think independently????

At least McClellan was doing his job (ie covering Bush's a--) what is the Media's excuse?

The media failed at every level and along with the Presidency of Bush will also be analyzed by future historians as a low point.

(Darn, I have a sentence fragment in there, but I hope you get the idea...)

@JJ: OK, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I definitely agree that ideology—especially ideology defined widely to include, as you note, the biases of culture, assumptions and social background—affects journalism too, absolutely. The point I was trying to emphasize here is that I think it tends to be focused on at the expense of very influential money/ratings factors; as I said in that Moyers review, there's a reason the same network that fired Phil Donahue in 2003 now gladly employs Olbermann.

First, I think McClellan is focusing more on the failure of straight reporting rather than punditry vis a vis WMDs, the case for war, etc. I'm not saying that punditry is irrelevant, but that the problem in question here is in the paucity of skeptical reporting that would have pointed out the uncertainties in the case for war.

Punditry allows to digest any fact into "truthiness" for the ever-gullible public, as Colbert hilariously puts it. So any real fact is promptly shat back out into spin for the rubes; the public never really had a chance, whether or not the WH bothered to provide candor. Not exactly too irrelevant. TomT's mistake was asking for a pundit to elaborate his opinion on the obvious complicity of pundits.

Like most in the MSM regarding the war, you give a cursory nod to the obvious failures of the national media before, right on cue, saying this is really all Joe Average's fault for being just too darn patriotic. I believe you said this outright in a former essay, right down to the "just too darn" phrase.

Your logic, like it always is whenever it's reiterated, is a cop-out. It also forgets one thing:

Joe Average went into a patriotism frenzy only after the MSM and Bush whipped them into said state for their own scurrilous reasons (ratings and oil/Israel respectively).

Last time a war in the Gulf happened, CNN became the #1 NEWS NETWORK IN THE WORLD, as Darth Vader intones. Do the math. Or better yet, stick to blathering about entertainment awards shows and Lost.

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