A couple things struck me as I watched the report. First, if Iraq had worked (I don't think it ever could have, but if it did) would all the lies have been ignored and justified by the success of the mission? Silly question, I know the answer, as do you, but I was momentarily saddened by the obvious truth that facts don't matter.
Second, I was also momentarily hopeful. "This is the kind of thing that needs to happen to change things, maybe the Times will see the error of their ways, maybe the Post will see the structural flaws that led it down this path." But, the report ends by reminding us that it's business as usual across the media spectrum. There are no liberal voices on television. The Cross Fire-esque he-said, she-said nature of modern journalism (read: stenographers for hire) is still dominating journalism, especially television journalism (but not only). And, most of the incredibly wrong journalists and pundits still comprise the starting line-up of opinion making journalism. It's amazing. Get the biggest story of our lifetimes wrong and you keep your job. I guess someone has to make the case for Iran, if it's not them then someone else.
Third, I had to wonder how long news will continue to exist in its present form. Newspapers, magazines, and television news (with the notable exception of certain alternative and public sources) are mostly owned by corporations with, as Dan Rather pointed out on the program, "big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that's the case." News doesn't make money. That's the line, it just costs money. But is that true? NO!!! But it's repeated so often it sounds true and it justifies massize layoffs, which lead to more profits, and an excuse for the stenography that bills itself as journalism. And stenography is what they want, and that's all they want. Stenographers with the stamp of objectivity. The Bush Administration and the Iraqi National Congress used the press in the most obvious ways, and they went along with it, happily. Journalism and reporting are not the same things. We have lots of professional readers stalking the airwaves of television journalism. They report. They read. The question is, who is writing what they read? We need journalists not just reporters and stenographers, but should we be hopeful? What is the alternative? More public money to support journalism? Non-profit newspapers? Citizen journalism via blogs and the Internet?
Fourth, I was shocked at how much of the lack of true journalism was the result of the uninterest of the public, the incest of Washington elite journalism, and pure, pathetic laziness. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, told a story about how the Post had a "Truth Squad", "We used to do at the Post something called truth squading. --President would make a speech. We used to do it with Ronald Reagan the first five or six months because he would make so many-- factual errors, particularly in his press conference." The Post stopped the "truth squad" not because of pressure from the White House, but because Americans thought it was in bad taste. As Pincus recalled, "And after-- two or three weeks of it-- the public at large, would say, 'Why don't you leave the man alone? He's trying to be honest. He makes mistakes. So what?' and we stopped doing it." What replaced the "truth squad"?
BILL MOYERS: You stopped being the truth squad.
WALTER PINCUS: We stopped truth squading every sort of press conference, or truth squading. And we left it then-- to the democrats. In other words, it's up to the democrats to catch people, not us.
BILL MOYERS: So if the democrats challenged-- a statement from the president, you could-- quote both sides.
WALTER PINCUS: We then quote-- both sides. Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: Now, that's called objectivity by many standards isn't it?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, that's-- objectivity if you think there are only two sides. and if you're not interested in-- the facts. And the facts are separate from, you know, what one side says about the other.
I can remember when criticizing Bush got you silenced, fired, or ridiculed (think Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks. every Democrat save Joe Lieberman). Now, it's hip to hate Bush. It's hip for Keith Olbermann to stick it to the man, or Stephen Colbert to openly mock him. Journalists weren't tougher on the President because no one wanted them to be.
The incestious relationship between government, corporations and the Washington Press corps is stunning. These people live toghether in a bubble. That's one reason that Knight Ridder was successful at seeing through the spin and lies, they were outside of DC. But this meant that they were largely ignored by the "opinion making" journalists, columnists, and pundits that dominate the corporate media. As Walter Pincus stated, "The administration can withstand the Knight Ridder critique because it-- it wasn't reverberating inside Washington. And therefore people weren't picking it up."
Another shocking source of this stenography-as-journalism is just straight up laziness. As Dan Rather said in the report, "Reporting is hard. The substitute for reporting far too often has become let's just ring up an expert. Let's see. These are experts on-- international armaments. And I'll just go down the list here and check Richard Perle... This is journalism on the cheap if it's journalism at all. Just pick up the phone, call an expert, bring an expert into the studio. Easy. Not time consuming. Doesn't take resources. And-- if you-- if you're lucky and good with your list of people, you get an articulate person who will kind of spark up the broadcast." No one in the report exemplified this better than journalist(?) and host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, "What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them." "I wish my phone had rung," are you serious? That's journalism? Waiting for someone to call you and tell you a big story? That's the laziest and stupidest thing I have ever heard.
Now, it's more than just journalistic laziness, there is a huge and perverse incentive structure to just report. Being first, "scooping" a big story is the goal for everyone, and in an age of 24 hour media filling the hours of the day means repetition and much more reporting than investigating. It's the structure of the media more than laziness or incestious relationships. The corporate dominated media that care more about bottom lines than "truthiness", the passive public that cares more about American Idol than the American Constitution, a self-reinforcing Beltway groupthink that listens more to the Times' Judith Miller than Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay, and a culture within journalism that cares more about filling the hours of the day and scooping a story than actually investigating the truthfulness of public pronouncements. All these things are created. Thus is not the world, thus have we made it. But, what is the incentive to change? I got nothing. Perhaps it's the lack of incentive to change that will lead people away from our current form of journalism for something different. Maybe that's the incentive, change or disappear.
Check out the Show at Bill Moyers Journal at PBS.com
Also check out the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) coverage of the Iraq Pre-War Intel
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