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TechnoratiWhen Journalism Became Transcription and Reporting Disappeared
Bill Moyers' PBS special last night on the media's complicity in pushing America to war was so powerfully upsetting that I am forced to resort to using mid-1990s NBA metaphors to describe it, if only because describing it without a metaphoric buffer is just too depressing. This production was the documentary equivalent of Tom Chambers famously jumping over a screaming Mark Jackson and hammering down one of the greatest, most in-your-face slam dunks in history.To call the media's complicity in the Iraq War a conspiracy is an insult to conspiracies, because it wasn't hidden - as Moyers shows, it was all out there for everyone to see. The problem was, Beltway reporters didn't want to see it. As New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller famously admitted, in the lead up to war most self-respecting Washington journalists who wanted to stay on the White House Christmas card list refused to ask tough questions because "no one wanted to get into an argument with the president."
What's really disturbing, however, is not even what this documentary says about the past - but what it says about the state of journalism today.
In interview after interview after interview, we hear top journalists and opinionmakers declare that they believe journalism is no longer about basic, hard-scrabble reporting or getting scoops. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus says, most reporters today actually try to avoid getting scroops because they "worry about sort of getting out ahead of something" and - gasp! - making their friends inside Official Washington mad at them. So rather than, say, do the real work of reporting news, journalism has become a profession that is almost entirely about PR, transcription and packaging Establishment spin for news copy. This is why, for example, many of the highest-profile political "journalists" like Joe Klein and David Broder never bother to actually report anything anymore - but instead spend most of their time pontificating on horse race polls and campaign gossip, expecting us to believe that's real "news."
This kind of attitude, as Moyers shows, goes straight to the top. Take, for instance, NBC's Tim Russert - the Washington Bureau Chief of NBC NEWS. I stress the word "news" because, remember, "news" is supposed to be reported in the trenches, not transcribed in a television studio. Russert loves to brag about coming from Buffalo (often ending his shows with some irritating quip about the Buffalo Bills) because he believes it gives him some sort of working-class cred and more importantly distracts viewer attention from the fact that he is a longtime Washington insider and multi-million-dollar journalist. And at one point, he brags to Moyers that "I'm a blue-collar guy from Buffalo - I know who my sources are [and] I work 'em very hard." But then when Moyers asks him why he gave Vice President Cheney such a free pass to come on Meet the Press and spew blatant lies about Iraq's WMD - lies that news organizations like Knight Ridder were exposing but people like Russert were ignoring - we get this gem from Russert:
"There were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them."
Moyers quickly noted that at least some reporters "didn't wait for the phone to ring," and that CBS's Bob Simon said that sources debunking the WMD case "would have been available to any reporter who called." And that makes Russert's entire sob story fall apart like a house of cards. Russert wants us to believe that he's just "a blue-collar guy from Buffalo" who works sources very hard. Yet, apparently, "working sources very hard" means not even picking up the phone to make a call, but instead sitting in a comfortable Washington office waiting for people to call him, and in the meantime giving Cheney as much airtime as he wanted to spew lies.
Then there is the interchange with The New Republic's Peter Beinart, who since cheerleading for the war and berating war critics, has been rewarded with a Time Magazine column and a post as a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Moyers asks Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart admits that despite his preening around as an expert, he'd never actually been to Iraq, but nonetheless insists that he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asks that as a "political journalist" what kind of reporting did he do to make sure his prewar cheerleading was substantively sound. Here's Beinart's answer:
"Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying."
So here we have one of the Iraq War's leading cheerleaders actually telling us that his entire method of backing up his case was all about amplifying official Washington through brazen transcription. He actually sits there and tells Moyers that as a self-described "political journalist" his primary method of reporting on the issues he presented himself as an expert on was by not reporting at all.
This is what journalism has become today - and the worst part of it is that people who follow this Russert-Beinart method of sitting in comfortable Washington offices not picking up the phone or doing primary research is actually being rewarded as we speak. Moyers, channeling a fantastic piece by Jebediah Reed in Radar Magazine, notes that most of the people who regurgitated the Washington Establishment's debunked case for war have actually been rewarded with even more prominent positions in the media. And while these desperate-for-attention media icons like Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman are happy to throw themselves in front of cameras for almost any opportunity to promote themselves, they categorically refused to talk to Moyers for his PBS special.
I went to journalism school because I thought journalism was about sifting through the B.S. in order to challenge power and hold the Establishment accountable. Bill Moyers and the folks I've worked with at McClatchy Newspapers who Moyers highlights show that that long tradition still exists. But the fact that they are such rare exceptions to the rule also show that the incentive system in journalism today is to reward not the people who challenge power, but the people who worship it. And though Tim Russert and Peter Beinart and Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman can kick back in Washington with their six figure salaries and tell themselves that they are really Important People, what we have seen is that they are part of a new journalistic culture that is threatening to destroy what once was a truly noble profession and undermine our democracy.
David Sirota is the author of the book Hostile Takeover. To subscribe to Sirota's regular newsletter, go to www.davidsirota.com and sign up on the left hand side.
© 2007 David Sirota
38 Comments so far
Show Allthe most telling part of the Moyers piece to me was the press conference in March 2003 right before the illegal invasion of Iraq began. watching all the fawning guests having to look upon smirking George the Miniscule has he patted each upon the head for their tail wagging devotion just sickened me to the core. these people have no integrity period .....................
Alexandra--The political elite are not as stupid as they make themselves out to be. They (with very few exceptions, I think Dennis Kucinich is one) are just liars who are controlled by corporate interests and think that we, the people, are stupid enough to believe their lies. We're trying to prove them wrong! G'Day!
After I read all the comments above I don't need to add anything accept; the result of the 'fuzzy' reporting is an overwhelming ignorance among the political elite, here in Australia and in the US. I am shocked every time I listen to the presidential candidates, it seems to me often that they don't even read the briefing paper their minders give them, the basic notion of 'cause and effect' re the violence in Iraq etc. eludes everybody. Please, if there is an 'awakening' the journalists who are confronted with the reality of international affairs make sure, your future leaders know it as well.
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Because I am from Sydney I am always at the end of the line of writers, never mind... I greet you all and appreciate your thoughts.
Orphan and Thomas More,
The full context of what Bill Moyers said was, "The number of Iraqis killed - over thirty-five thousand last year alone - is hard to pin down."
David Sirota's feelings on today's "journalists" are mine, too. I graduated from J-school in the year of Watergate and Woodward & Bernstein's textbook reporting made me even prouder of my journalism degree. Today I can't believe how this once proud and vital Fourth Estate has degenerated into a nefarious tool for the neo-cons. The results of "soft news" and "infotainment" has become so pervasive it's turning our country into a nation of sheep.
Bill Moyers certainly brought this out on his PBS special. His intellect, stalwart reporting skills and rather homespun logic make him the true democratic (small d) conscience of America. I saw him speak two years ago at a journalim forum here in San Diego. Articulate and engaging, we held on his every word. Looking deeper, you see a Christian man who uses his faith for spiritual sustenance rather than for image before the public.
A certain part of Moyer's talk countested the right's assertion that progressives are non-believers. He said that if the religious rightists are the only true believers than why are all the preachings of Jesus--from loving your neighbor, caring for the poor, shunning materialism and profiteering, and governing righteously--being ignored? Moyers said the only time Jesus was actually angry was when he cast out the money-changers working the temple in Jerusalem; money making in the Halls of God. Today, he said, we must cast out the money-changers from the Halls of Democracy. At least while we still have the political means to do so.
It's happening to us, too. We all have wondered, how did it happen to the Germans? How did they get sucked in? Just as we have been. If we don't stop it, Iran will be bombed and then who will be next?
This is a combination of several posts above but where does it say that the role of media is to truthfully inform the public? In fact, in our Constitution, where is the, for lack of a better term, "Inspector General" function assigned? Who is charged with telling the American people what is truthful and what is not? When you get down to it, what IS truthful and what is not?
The media exist as a business. If we, the media consumers, paid for only what is truthful (or as close to truthful as can be had) we would get truthful. We pay for lots of things but seldom for sustained truth. We usually pay the media to be titillated have our beliefs reinforced.
The sad but true comment is that we do have the kind of media and the kind of society that most of the population want. If you want the population to change ... you have to wait until they feel that their individual lives are deeply threatened, then maybe they will look up and pay attention. It took a crushing defeat for Germans to look up and think that their society was wrong throughout the 30's and 40's. I'm afraid that it has to get that bad.
There seems to be a happy coincidence developing, which one might even attribute to the passing spirit of humanist, Kurt Vonnegut.
At the exact same time Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" and other Internet-based truths are revealing the corrupt and lying corporate media and increasing public awareness that the elite, corporate media is guilty of abusing average 'working class' Americans --- "treating them like a rich kid's Christmas toys" (as Vonnegut said); Dennis Kucinich, with his populist/progressive courage to attack the Bush Empire and Cheney with impeachable offenses against the American people, is likewise revealing the corrupt and lying corporate political scam that has allowed our democracy to be stolen by a guileful global corporate elite Empire hiding behind this crooked façade of "Vichy America".
The American 'working class', which is the vast majority, is starting to "See Clearly Now" (as the song goes) how they have been abused and lied to and they will turn against this corporate Empire controlled political scam and corporate controlled media scam with a vengeance.
Hopefully, with your efforts both the corporate elite political structure and the corporate corrupt media structure will fall HARD and FAST.
It would indeed be lovely to see the corporate media scam and the corporate political scam die together in a murder/suicide.
I watched the first part of the show, and what did I see? The presentation of the fact that BS is more important than facts. I knew this before we went to war, I found information on the Internets to quote the idiot in chief. A surprise, the only surprise is that the sheeple finally figure out four years too late that they were lied into a war. Get a grip america it doesn't take someone to tell you that you were coerced and lied to by the elites, GW's base. I laugh at the surprise and admiration for these talking heads. They work for the moneyed classes and not the masses. Figure it out, history has repeated itself once again. Remember the Hearst papers and the Spanish American war? Well yellow journalism is with us today. Paying attention to the propaganda once more let's the crooks of our country take it over. But not to worry, it is almost over with this experiment and soon your new lifestyle will be upon you. Enjoy it, you deserve it. HA!!
MichaelPDA-said
My fear is that this is just another sad example of how newspapers under great strain by dwindling readers are gutting there hard news people in favor of news-lite.
Knight-Ridder was sold because the shareholders thought the paper chain should have been giving them more return on their dollar, and in the process of being sold, the best aspect of the paper (its reporters and outside the beltway look) has been gutted. One wonders if this was not the intention of those who profit in the first place. It seems our only hope is alternative news outlets.
**************
It's not dwindling readership that is driving the metamorphosis of newspapers into McNews blather sheets. It is the greed of investors who demand of newspapers a profit margin that they were neither designed nor expected to sustain except by becoming advertiser circulars. The readership has vanished in response to the trivialization of the news not vice-versa.
With apologies to Bill from Saginaw 4:47 pm for plagerizing his lead-in:
For my taste, the highlight of the show was Dick Cheney (in his Meet the Press interview) citing the New York Times as an independent source after he (or Scooter Libby) had planted the story there.
That was clearly the administration modus operandi: Plant a lie, get it printed, and use that as evidence that it's true.
And no "journalists" seemed to be aware of the continuing scam.
One small note: The Akron Beacon Journal, the daily paper once home of the John. S. Knight of "Knight-Ridder" was part of the deal when McKlatchy bought out Knight-Ridder. Once bought out, the new head of the chain gutted the number of reporters, and I was told by one reporter that the new editor said something about, and I parphrase, why do we need so many reporters when we get the AP wire service.
My fear is that this is just another sad example of how newspapers under great strain by dwindling readers are gutting there hard news people in favor of news-lite.
Knight-Ridder was sold because the shareholders thought the paper chain should have been giving them more return on their dollar, and in the process of being sold, the best aspect of the paper (its reporters and outside the beltway look) has been gutted. One wonders if this was not the intention of those who profit in the first place. It seems our only hope is alternative news outlets.
And the odds of ANY of you lot actually paying to read Common Dreams and thus supporting actual journalism is....?
Ziltch.
Internet users really need to break free of this "it's on the net so it should be free" mindset.
to:RuthK April 26th, 2007 3:37 pm
Thanks so much for the reference to Big media and Corporate America.I had it at one time but it got lost in the 'suffle'.Whenever I refere to it in discussions folks are astounded.And of course the GOP is always in bed with both of them. There will never be a'level playing' field .
I am an alumnus of SSU in Sonoma County, CA.Nice to see them turn out a nice piece of research.
I always loved to watch "Now" with Bill Moyers. He is one of the few public figures with integrity. As for the newspapers, the only thing I trust printed in them are the sports scores.
Now if we could just get everyone in the country to watch this show and then agree to turn off any, and I do mean ANY shamestream media news, we might get somewhere. I do not watch TV except Neflicks movies. I get all my news from the Internet where REAL investigative journalism is taking place. There are a few good men and women out there at a few newspapers but they are drowned out in the din of self-congratulating echo chamber particpants who I swear to God have gotten cloned minds that all think the same damn borning non-stories are "what's happening" and we should hang on their every word. Occasionally I listen to NPR but find them equally obnoxious and disappointing in their filling of the public airwaves with ......NOTHING! Give em up and tell your friends and neighbors to go to this website or TruthOut each day and they'll have a much better idea of what is going on
Bill Moyers is truly a credit to the profession of journalism. It is an absolute shame the profession rushed headlong into becoming a willing accomplice to fraud and lies. Thanks to commondreams for making me aware of last night' program.
David, I feel the same way about the Moyers piece. I'm so glad these "journalists" are beginning to be exposed. One area the report made me wonder about was mentioned in your column--the journalism schools. What is going on there? Has it changed? Is it more about being a careerist now? Is that what they teach? Who produces these Russerts and Beinarts? Time for some reporting on who is teaching our reporters.
I was hoping that an expose like the one presented by Bill Moyers on national TV would be a turning point in bringing attention to the elimination of the free press and the crimes of the Bush Administration. It was a very good presentation. The papers are silent about it today as if he had shouted into a vaccuum. I still wish Moyers would consider either running for Presidant or endorsing Kucinich. I hope his next expose will be on the stolen elections of 2001 & 2004.
Let us put into perspective the "new journalistic culture" that is described here. Since it is not offering anything new, novel, or critical regarding the world in which we live, and since suddenly the presence of the internet and blogs is connecting all of those who are doing our critical thinking homework, who exactly is the "new journalist," the pundit being paid the six figure salary or the novel writer who does it for free in his/her spare time?
I contend that conventional journalism is dead, and magazines such as Time just don't fully realize it yet. When they see that more and more Americans aren't buying it, they will cut pundit journalists from their staff as so much exceess labor.
On the other hand, remember who is Time Magazine's Person of the Year this year. You are. Now, watch what happens over the next few years. There are more of us then there are of them. Once we start listening to ourselves and each other more and to established media outlets less, we will transform media and reintroduce critical thinking into our way of examining issues. In such a case, why would Time Magazine pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to disseminate opinions whose intellectual worth is inferior to that of those who offer superior opinions for free?
www.raycarlson.com to help you connect the dots... ... ...
One major problem is the ownership of the media. At one time, the ownership was spread out and far less concentrated. Check out:
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0624-25.htm
A handful of people decide what is news and what we will see. I'll bet that no one who comments here is one of the deciders.
It was a great show. We do need to know what they are teaching in those schools, if we cannot rely on the press for information, not popularity with the party in power, we have no way of knowing what the truth is. I do not care who is in power, as long as the power is for the people, and the person who is put there, is VOTED in by the PEOPLE! We need a press that is not brown nosing all the time. Maybe that is why they let Bush steel not just one but two elections, and now tell us any investigation on the voting problems is OLD NEWS!
Was 600,000 Iraqi deaths + or - a few 100,000 an inconvenient truth or failure on Moyers part to do his homework, 34,000 just doesn't cut it for a reporter known for meticulous research, not in my opinion anyway.
During my growing up years in Texas, I remember my dear father buying the morning, the evening and the Spanish language newspaper and reading the paper while my mother served him his breakfast, or evening meal. Heck, we even wallpapered the kitchen with it, to keep out the cold. Yes, we were the working poor and still my father would spend some hard earned coins to buy the newspapers. He also studied the Constitution and would tell us children about the Bill of Rights and Freedom of the Press. I still believe. The writer up there, Walden is right, we must investigate what is going on in the journalism schools. And I heartily believe that we must promote the small independent presses and the internet to disseminate the truth.
I agree that Moyers' show last night was TV journalism at its best, and that the complete nonreaction today in the print press and on cable proves once again the whole point about how the mainstream can marginalize pretty much anyone or anything they want that hits too raw a nerve.
For my taste, the highlight of the show was the astounding admission by the Washington Post's Walter Pincus that the beltway press corps initially performed a factual watch dog function during the first couple of years of the Reagan administration and then quit.
Pincus described how Ronald Reagan would cite statistics or say things in press conferences that simply were dead wrong. The print media would do the research, and follow up with articles pointing out the errors. The then found themselves castigated by other media for picking on the President due to liberal bias, and were shunted aside by insider sources in future news stories in retaliation for their criticisms of poor Ronnie.
End result? According to Walter Pincus (whom I consider a top flight print journalist by current standards), a decision was made (unclear by who) TO SIMPLY STOP CHALLENGING THE PRESIDENT'S FALSE FACTS. This happened over twenty years ago, apparently.
When Bill Moyers pressed a bit, Mr. Pincus went on to largely justify this journalistic shift by mentioning how we Americans live in a two party democratic political system, and it was the role of the opposition party (not the role of the press) to fill the watch dog role and challenge the White House's factual misrepresentations when they came up.
Now think about that for just a minute.
It's Harry Reid's job to call Bush a liar, Pelosi's job to dump on Cheney, Levin gets Rumsfeld, Leahy goes after whoever's Attorney General, and so on and so forth. The press and media then "objectively" report on the controversy, since it has now become newsworthy.
The substance of the dispute is foever buried in a horse race/personality conflict that ensues, all of which is refereed by the reporter or commentator. Small wonder under such a model of journalism, everything emerges as just another superficial, partisan food fight between squabbling elites inside the beltway.
Abrogation of the fourth estate's watch dog function to the loyal opposition also insures that many lies (particularly those based upon classified information) will go unchallenged altogether. Finding the truth will always remain a secondary priority, far behind commenting upon who scores the most style points or spins the patriotic yarn most likely to be acceptable to most Americans.
And that's exactly the way that Leo Straus and Karl Rove want to see democracy function.
What if the White House held a "press conference" and nobody went? That's what should be happening.
Is Russert one of those MSNBC guys I never watch?
I do watch Keith Olbermann and would watch others like him, but if there are others like him on MSNBC I haven't found them.
Bill Moyers always does an excellent job. Last night's show can still be seen on the web at PBS.
This program was the best show on television in quite a long time.Moyers is to be recognized as the only true journalist left. He should run for
the Presidency.
Bill Moyers did a superb job, as usual! I am glad hes back. You won't get a lie from him and I'm sure he knows exactly why the inspectors left Iraq. This is a guy that is a real reporter and does his homework.
I'm proud to point out he's from Texas, might make up for some other critters that got loose.
Islandindeclitine I am sure has it right. " it is between journalists (specifically, their publishers) and big business.ine "
Moyers' presentation last night sifted through the prewar bullshit once again, and we are once again appalled at the gullibility and outright complicity of our media and our politicians in what, out here in the boondocks of darkest America, have always been obvious fictions. We shut off our television sets in November of 2001 and cancelled our newspaper subscriptions and turned to the Internet where everybody has an axe to grind but at least nobody can block the flow of information. I think it would be a shame for newspapers to disappear altogether. Most major papers exactly fit the bottom of my parrot cage, and I have a friend who saves them for me. Thank God for the jigsaw puzzles..
As a journalist for some 35 years, the problem is not between journalists and the political administration - it is between journalists (specifically, their publishers) and big business. Do not expect balanced (or any) reportage on a scandal when a corporation is involved and big money is at stake - no matter where it happens. Small towns are in the same boat as the city rags in these cases.
Publications survive on ad revenue.
It all comes down to money - and who has it.
If you didn't make tape of last night's program you can buy a DVD or tape from Moyers website:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
It's about $30 dollars and is worthy of a family heirloom to pass on to your future progeny explaining what "they" will surely try to kill by ignoring it or substituting their own noise to silence it.
PDJ thanks for the insights. Jaded Prole: the whole point of silence is proof of all that Moyer has tried to disclose. It's all about how issues are being framed (George Lakoff) and/or the politics of excluded alternatives. This explains why Kennedy's report on the Ohio election debacle went no where in mainstream media, and why so many don't even know who Dennis Kucinich is! But they know plenty about American idol and all the other celebrity idolatry underway. It helps to facilitate a sheeplike population... and wow, what it will take to rouse those sleepy hynpotized sheep. They tend to get angry at people who TRY to wake them up with all the inconvenient truths currently in fashion. If they can't silence the messenger, they attack him/her.
Once upon a long time ago, I aspired to be an investigative journalist in the mold of Woodward and Bernstein, but alas, over time, I gave up that ideal for something else. But I have always held journalists in the highest esteem. Sadly, however, last night's Bill Moyers Journal showed me that the majority of people who refer to themselves as "journalists" have become nothing more than sycophantic lapdogs to the administration. God bless Bill Moyers for holding up a mirror to what has happened to the good name of "journalist", and God bless those who still believe in the profession as being that of the government watchdog. Too bad they are so far and few between.
I point to Bill Moyers and say to my young son, "that is what a hero looks like".
If Hitler had mouthpieces such as the MSM in the Iraq war runup he could have conquered the world without a single shot. It's truly scary to realize that so many Americans believed, and still believe, such "news".
Hats off to the Knight-Ridder crew for their efforts to keep us informed. And to you Bill Moyers, for continuing to bring us what are probably the most significant, most important, news documentaries of our time. Thank you.
Overall, i think Moyers did a fairly good job. I was annoyed that he gave very short attention to the millions who never believed the NYTimes and the Washington Post, and made their views known in the streets. He also could have given more attention to the critical experts like Scott Ritter or Juan Cole.
His reply would probably be that the focus of his program was on the journalists behavior. but, my own view is that Moyers still spends too much time in the professional journalism bubble himself. In Amy Goodmans Democracy Now interview Tuesday morning, he showed, or feined, ignorance of the corporate control PBS and NPR in calling for an end of all government support of public TV and radio.
His program had one glaring error. Moyer's looked at the phenomemenon of how a falsehood can become true if repeated enough by a clean-cut "official" looking person, but then fell for one such lie himself when he repeated the Clinton-perpetrated falsehood that Saddam "kicked out" the UN inspectors in 1998. In reality, the inspectors were removed at the insistence of the US, to protect them from Clintons December 1998 bombing of Iraq.
orphan April 26th, 2007 5:14 pm
Was 600,000 Iraqi deaths + or - a few 100,000 an inconvenient truth or failure on Moyers part to do his homework, 34,000 just doesn't cut it for a reporter known for meticulous research, not in my opinion anyway.
Good point....I need to go back and watch the show again. 34,000 was the number killed in 2006 according to the UN report.
The show was well worth watching.
Journalism the good old days.
Magic thinking....