Walter Pincus of the Post: Our Neutered Newsrooms are a Poor Example to the Rest of the World
It is rare that a single article advances American press think. In fact, it is rare for American press think to advance at all, which is one of the reasons our press is so vexed these days. Take this column by Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor. Goes like this:
Many readers have complained to me that the Times is not "shooting down the middle" in its coverage of the 2008 campaign. But I've been monitoring and grading the coverage myself, and I have a surprise for some of you. "The Times has not been systematically biased in its news coverage, even if it has occasionally given ammunition to those who claim otherwise."
Ta-da... An unbiased press! Now I do not doubt his word. Clark wouldn't cook the books. But this is a conversation that's savagely stuck, gamed not to go anywhere -- for all sides. Professional journalists do not improve the situation when they double down on their neutrality and present objectivity as a truth claim about their own work. It is this kind of claim that compels people to furnish -- furiously -- more chapter and verse in the very bad and very long book of media bias. Which then causes Hoyt to speak lines like, "Bias is a tricky thing to measure, because we all bring our biases to the task."
The only exit from this system is for people in the press to start recognizing: there is a politics to what they do. They have to get that part right. And they have to be more transparent about it.
But this recognition is circuit-frying for the press we inherited from the Watergate era, and from the long arc of professionalization before that. For it means that political argument isn't really "separate" from news at all, even though the priesthood wants it to be, and still preaches that. There's a reason Daniel Okrent considered his most important column as public editor this one. (Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper? "Of course it is," he said -- on social issues at least. It reflects the city where it is made.)
The informed display of political conviction
Josh Marshall's TPM Media operation is a new media newsroom that does political reporting in the same space as the big providers. Marshall believes in accountability journalism, sticking with stories, digging into public records for information, getting to the bottom of things, verifying what you think you know, correcting the record when you get it wrong.
TPM marries these traditional virtues to open expressions of outrage, incredulity marking certain political figures as ridiculous or beyond the pale, and the informed display of political conviction. These make it obvious to any reader of Talking Points Memo that Marshall is a liberal Democrat skeptical of the Bush agenda, though not a dogmatic one. His is the transparency route to trust and success in political journalism. A key crossing point came last month when Marshall and company won a George K. Polk Award for excellence in reporting on the legal system.
The way Marshall figures it, the important thing is to show integrity -- not to be a neuter, politically. Having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well. TPM's homegrown mix combines political argument, dogged investigative work, news aggregation, a filtered community forum, some media criticism, and user-assisted reporting.
(Marshall discussed his approach, and I commented on it, on KCRW's "politics of culture" show, hosted by Kevin Roderick of LA Observed, with Mark Glaser of Media Shift joining us. Listen here. Also, I will be joining in a forum at TPM Cafe's Book Club next week on the press and the Iraq War.)
Uncoupling fairness from neutrality
If the press has to get its own politics right to do news well and remain a force for public good, then future success in the production of news may hinge on the quality of political argument and ideological experiment within the pro tribe itself. That's a conversation that isn't happening yet, but there is action everywhere.
Marshall's success is one example. Keith Olberman anchoring political coverage for MSNBC while also engaging in "special commentaries" that denounce Bush for world class denial and criticize Hillary Clinton for fratricide -- that's another. Now comes James Poniewozik of Time making the case for disclosure. Political journalists, tell us who you voted for! "The biggest reason to go open kimono is that the present system does what journalism should never do: it perpetuates a lie," says Poniewozik.
Modern political journalism is based on the bogus concept of neutrality (that people can be steeped in campaigns yet not care who wins) and the legitimate ideal of fairness (that people can place intellectual integrity and rigor over their rooting interests). Voting and disclosing would expose the sham of neutrality -- which few believe anyway -- and compel opinion and news writers alike to prove, story by story, that fairness is possible anyway. Partisans, bloggers and media critics are toxically obsessed with ferreting out reporters' preferences; treating them as shameful secrets only makes matters worse.
I agree. Uncoupling fairness (needed) from neutrality (not) is a critical and positive step. And I'm with Jeff Jarvis, writing for The Guardian: "The more journalists tell us about their sources, influences and perspectives, the better we can judge what they say." But disclosing whom you voted for (Obama for Poniewozik, Clinton for Jarvis) is only a part of it. In many ways, the easiest part. Political press think needs a deeper overhaul. The really tricky question is not, "whom did you vote for?" but "what are you doing with your power?" And how are you generating power and authority in the first place, behind what claims?
The courage to admit you're a participant
Walter Pincus has been at the Washington Post for some 35 years as a reporter, most of it specializing in the intelligence world and the national security state. (He was also executive editor of the New Republic during Watergate, and worked for a brief time on a Senate committee.) Pincus, I think, is one of the best reporters in Washington; and he has his own ideas about journalism.
He proved that when he was asked to write an essay for a new magazine called Frank: Academics for the Real World, which is published by the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas. It is this piece that moves the ball down the field: Power of the Pen: A Call for Journalistic Courage. Up until yesterday, it wasn't online, so barely anyone has seen it.
Pincus does something rare for any mainstream journalist: he openly argues for a more political press. He even uses the word "activist," which is forbidden in the mainstream newsroom code. And he says that courage in political reporting sometimes means the courage to admit you're a participant--a player, a power in your own right -- within the struggle for self-government, the battle for public opinion and the politics of the day.
Jim Lehrer of PBS would turn on his heel and walk away from Walter Pincus on some of these points. Leonard Downie, executive editor of the Post, would probably blanch. Of course those are the most interesting parts. For instance, Pincus describes the rise of neutrality as a loss of rights and a conversion downward for the political press.
Owners, editors and reporters today rarely push issues they believe government should take up. If a vote were taken among editors of the major daily newspapers, the vice presidents of network news editions, television and radio anchors, and, I hate to say, probably even most younger print and electronic reporters, the result would be that few to none want or believe they have the right to shape government actions. They don't want to play activist roles in government--either personally or professionally--unless, of course, it could affect the bottom line.
If Lou Dobbs and his "apocalyptic centrism" are a ratings hit for CNN, he can stay. But for the deciders in the news business, the fiction of floating above politics is the better way to prosper. To Pincus that's positively lame.
I believe this failure is a threat to our democracy and a poor example for the rest of the world. This is my romantic and unfashionable view of journalism, but it is the one that caused many of us to take up the profession in the first place.
Undoing what Deaver did
"The Power of the Pen" builds on a short essay Pincus wrote in 2006 for Nieman Watchdog. There he described a very concrete way in which the presidency had brought the news media under greater control. Michael Deaver started it during the Reagan Years. By giving early guidance to the networks about where the president would be speaking and what he plans to say to whom, Deaver began to edit the news himself:
He turned that meeting, which began in prior administrations to help network news television producers plan use of their camera crews each day, into an initial shaping of the news story for that evening.
Independent judgment in the press was eroded, which Pincus counts as a power shift. When you commit cameras and extend coverage based on what the White House says it plans to say, you cede power over the news to the President. There's mission creep:
The Washington Post, which prior to that time did not have a standing White House story scheduled each day (running one only when the president did something new and thus newsworthy), began to have similar daily coverage.
This turns precious news space into a messaging system for political controllers. Pincus marvels at how being able to "stay on message" is considered a crucial skill by Washington reporters, when this is the very method that reduces them to stenographers.
Of course, the "message" is the public relations spin that the White House wants to present and not what the President actually did that day or what was really going on inside the White House.
The press was getting boxed in by its own routines, including its fascination with the inside story.
This system reached its apex [in 2006] when the White House started to give "exclusives" -- stories that found their way to Page One, in which readers learn that during the next week President Bush will do a series of four speeches supporting his Iraq policy because his polls are down. Such stories are often attributed to unnamed "senior administration officials." Lo and behold, the next week those same news outlets, and almost everyone else, carries each of the four speeches in which Bush essentially repeats what he's been saying for two years.
When what's going on is public relations, not governing, the press still feels it must extend coverage because to refuse it would seem... too political. Pincus knows this. Still, he says journalists should refuse to publish "any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public."
Quit your part in the propaganda system. Stop enabling message control. No "standing" or automatic coverage should be granted. No running to the spin room, either. We have to undo what Deaver did and re-gain some of that lost territory.
Looking to the past for better press think
Pincus, I think, is well aware that he is no longer hugging the shore of mainstream press think, but drifting out to sea. And so he turns to the past to get his bearings. To William Allen White of Kansas, who helped explain and promote Theodore Roosevelt's progressive ideas, speaking to the nation from the Emporia Gazette. And to Lincoln Steffens, the great muckraker (and progressive) of the early 1900s, who wrote "Shame of Cities," a series about municipal corruption.
Steffens started the flame that awards like the George K. Polk keep alive. About his articles explaining the corrupt machines in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, he says, "They were written with a purpose, they were published serially with a purpose, and they are reprinted now together to further that same purpose." The politicians "will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government." (Yes, the progressives overestimated what could be done with publicity and exposure alone.)
Creating demand in the country for more transparent and accountable government is the political part of the reporting project Steffens undertook with his "shame" series. "All very unscientific," he wrote.
But then, I am not a scientist. I am a journalist. I did not gather with indifference all the facts and arrange them patiently for permanent preservation and laboratory analysis. I did not want to preserve, I wanted to destroy the facts.
I wanted to destroy the facts. That's Steffens, disclosing his agenda. He wanted to see if the findings in his report, "spread out in all their shame,'" would "set fire to American pride," and change what was acceptable to voters and influential citizens.
That was the journalism of it. I wanted to move and to convince. That is why I was not interested in all the facts, sought none that was new, and rejected half those that were old.
Steffens, I think, would know how to deal with an accusation of bias.
The fourth branch of government
By re-claiming White and Steffens as heroes, Pincus is dissenting from the view you can hear in this account from columnist Matt Miller, who five years ago went searching for the limits of press neutrality.
"I don't think that if you sat in on page-one meetings over the course of six months," says Steve Coll, managing editor of The Washington Post, "you would hear any discussion about 'We ought to do this because we want to put it on the map.' You have to see the media as chronicling the public square. When nobody shows up in the public square to talk about what you would wish them to talk about, is the person standing in the back with an open notebook the structural cause of that?"
It's a vivid image of a blameless press: the open notebook on a windswept public square. Miller interprets what Coll is saying:
The national press, despite its power and occasional hobbyhorses, sees its role as "witnessing," as serving up a "daily diary of debate," as offering "a platform for independent inquiry and investigation" -- but not as setting the terms of public discussion.
Even though it does have that power, at times. Miller again:
I asked Downie, "Should the news side of an organization like yours have a perspective on what are the most important challenges facing the country?""No," Downie said instantly.
Walter Pincus disagrees. And he has a theory, which starts with Edmund Burke on the rise of a "fourth estate" and winds up with Downey's instantaneous "No." I summarize:
Whoever can speak to the public as a whole has political power. This power can be used for good or ill. Some who have used it for good have sought to influence government. The framers of the Constitution were familiar with this type of editor, and so freedom of the press protects the power of the pen. But it also protects the kind of press that would shrink from using its power, or re-claiming it. This is where courage is necessary. But recent history isn't very encouraging.
"Transmitters of other people's ideas..."
In the 1950s Douglas Cater called the press the fourth branch of government. "The reporter is the recorder of government but also a participant," said Cater. Since then, official policy has been toward a less political press, less inclined to see itself as a participant, even as complaints about bias have risen. This cycle has weakened journalism. The fairness doctrine, an official policy of even handedness, spread "backward" from television to newspapers. Media concentration, publicly-traded stock, and the rise of monopoly news gatherers helped enthrone the notion that providers of news should be onlookers.
Today's mainstream print and electronic media want to be neutral, unbiased and objective, presenting both or all sides as if they were on the sidelines in a game in which only the players--the government and its opponents--can participate. They have increasingly become common carriers, transmitters of other people's ideas and thoughts, irrespective of import, relevance and at times even accuracy.
Reporters with depth of knowledge are capable of challenging government and getting beyond he said, she said, a tepid style of truthtelling. But the media corporation shifts its people around a lot. They switch towns, beats, assignments so often that it's impossible for most reporters to build up any independent base of authority. They can't challenge spin because they don't know enough. So they become transmitters. Neutrality valorizes a loss of footing and self-respect.
This is bad news for the press if you care about having a strong one, capable of challenging the line of the day. But fine for the media, which finds it far cheaper to farm out "context" and "analysis" to ex-government officials. They came by their knowledge at another sector's expense.
To wrap this up, a question via Sir Pincus for public editor Clark Hoyt: What if the very thing the New York Times is doing for reasons of trust--remain officially neutral, like Switzerland--is causing more people to trust the Times less and less? You can say those people are misguided. You can prove them wrong with better stats. Or you can read Power of the Pen, and start your re-think right there.
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A poor example? I disagree. Our MSM is a perfect example of how a free press
can become complicit, corrupted, coerced & co-opted by the forces of fascism.
Walter Pincus articles I have read lately show that dis-information is what he learn about the intellegence community. He surely took a tumble and his foot slipped out of his ass and went into his mouth.
Even the most uninformed American can see thru he most recent arctilce on the Economy and the reasons for our dollars decline. Believe it or not the American People know the low interest loans were a scam for the wealthy to try and rob the treasury. Some were just hoping they might end up with a home when it all falls apart at a lower than average cost.
They may still be able too when that 1.9 million in Investor Owned home loans goes into default in June and drives home prices into the basement.
Unquestioning obedience to corporate authority and an all consuming identification with an extremist right wing conservative world view is the principle characteristic of the Petraeus Generation, which dominates todays Press Corp.
Interesting to list MSNBC Olbermann and Matthews here. Today after Obama's speech they excerpted part of it and made him an inspiring free political ad masked as an ad for their anchors. I have also noticed this week that Matthews is strongly hinting he is using his and his brother's PA political connections, (his brother ran for the office of republican Lt. Gov. in PA and Matthews is considering and being asked to make a run for a PA senate seat), to run an underground campaign against Sen. Clinton. This is the ultimate outrage for the press. The press has become the legislative branch and is actively running for office while opining against selected candidates. That is why I no longer trust or listen to MSM.
Judith Miller wasn't neutral; she was a willing conduit for government lies disguised as objective reporting. Her access led to fame, celebrity and unearned qualification as an expert on terrorism. In the end her behavior contributed to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and Americans. I suppose she could have said, "I'm a stooge for Dick Cheney" at some point. It might have helped. Her employers didn't need to feign neutrality. They needed to fire her for her lousy performance as a journalist. In the long run she deserves a special spot in hell.
Typical american arrogance. The words "poor example" in the title of this article infer that the U.S. is a leader and a nation that other countries look up to and want to emulate. Like most other things american, your news reporting and media overall is something the civilized world has laughed at for many, many years now.
Now, the U.S. does do several things right. You are still a leader in technology.
Your space program is still the best, and your medical technology is still amongst the best.
And of course, you excel in the technology of war machines. And naturally, you still are #1 in the willingness to use those war machines to destroy nations.
Your country is feared, but no longer respected. If your armed forces were not so powerful, the world would ignore you. The title of this article is indeed an example, but an example of the hubris of americans that is leading to the rapid destruction of your empire. Bravo, U.S.A.
The conduct of such T.V. talking heads such as the smug O'Reilly or the windy Matthews is as boorish as it is irritating. Would anyone want to invite these bloated egos into their home? Ah, and not to forget the female clones on FOX with their hiked-up dresses and shrill voices -- temptation? Yes, to turn off the set. It is not a matter of "neutrality" which is the problem, it is the persistent effort to make the news "entertaining". It doesn't have to be.
The media shouldn't allow itself to be distracted by such things as whether or not we are biased. We need to stay focused on defeating our opposition, the Republicans, in the fall.
-Trevor Wynne
Washington, DC
Well here are my thoughts and maybe some of you can take them further than I have time to regarding Jay's article. I agree with much that he is saying, in fact I always found it hard to put into context why the press did not band together about a decade or so agon when there was screaming from the sidelines that the media was a Liberal media, run by liberal media darlings and liberal journalist. I am not sure how Jay or other journalist feel about this contention but obviously there have been people who beat back against this type of treatment, Ezra Klein, but I always had the impression that many journalist and investigative reporters where in fact liberal not because of some subjective perpspective but from an acedemic perspective. I am makng a leap but I digress in feeling that after going to college, getting a master's degree and being around students and teacher's alike that many of those, I dare say, most of those who were invested in studoes liek myself leaned a little left. In fact I think it is often hard to not have a liberal perspective when it comes to pursuing knowledge because maybe it's especially important to keep your eyes open and keep your options open. Maybe this is a bit of a naive statement, so if it seems so then someone clear me up with their observations. The other thing that really stands out when it comes to the objectivity of the media dn journalist is the affect of political correctness in the media in general. I have always felt that the public is better served when the bias is served up subjectively because it helps a person Identify exactly whom and for what community the person is speaking. I am all for honest assholes in the world, that I can see and hear what I am up against. Maybe they think I am an asshole, who knows because most people seem unsure of offending people despite their inner subjectivity. To find my audience filled with subjectivity this week all one needs to do is read local papers from cities around the country, for me this is the Houston Chronicle, see if there is a story about the Rev Wright and Obama and then go down and start to read the comments section. See right there that is my enemy, a subjective opinion about a black minister wh teaches in a black community, who served his country, who has no doubt been a patriarch and hero to many in his community, and an endless inluence on the parishioners speaking to his audience of which many who make up the congregation have experienced racism in their lives, who have experienced sexism in their lives, who have experiennced troubled times financially, who have seen frineds and families effected by the past of this country using his pulpit to tell them that he sees it too, that he feels it too, that it is hard for him too, and that we (outsiders) don't understand. I do understanmd what he is saying and I find it completely hyposcritical for many in my community to act outraged by his comments considering that our preachers(of course I can not speak for all but I have been to baptist, methodist, Church of Christ, Catholic churches) have in my life preached agianst non-christians, preached against homo-sexuals and transgendered but basically preached against difference as a message to their constituents. This does not excuse his comments and I can see why some my have trouble understanding them as I do but I do not know what it is like to walk in any of the shoes of those in their community. So it would be nice to understand how those in the pews felt the Rev Wrights sermons preached to them, as it would be nice to understand how the preachers in my life affected those around me, the difference is that I talk to these people and can tell to a certain degree of its effect in my community.
Just my two cents!
Interesting that this piece should appear on the same day and on the same page as the article about the McClatchy Group who has toiled in relative obscurity to get the balanced story out.
Interesting, also, that after reading Mr. Rosen's piece, people merrily revert to discussing the relative merits of the three big cable news outlets -- corporate vanities, all.
A good place to start (here at Huffington Post), would be coverage of the "Winter Soldier" testimonies that are going on right now. These stories from our veterans returning from Iraq must be heard and reported on. I implore you all to go listen and watch these moving and terrifying testimonies that I just saw this morning and have left quite an impression on me.
Here is the link:
http://www
I wish everyone well.
JK
YES.......
THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT MUST BE HEARD, NOW. These soliders represent the true meaning of our constitution. The part that I was able to listen to on DemocracyNow! moved me to tears, yet stirred my heart and soul so much that I really wonder why WE ALL AREN'T CAMPING ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN.
I want fair and balanced news. Cannot find it in the US. I want reporters not journalists who are absolute fools with a name as tey spew what they are told to. I really expected when the writers struck for the news to be off as who writes the crap the news heads spew too? Just for a few minutes a day I feel I am satified because Keith O on MSNBC is the only one I hear say something deeper than anyone else speaks. I used to get the news from Jon Stewert but since his night before with Hillar I can do without him too. No one should use comedy or the news to support and candidate either way for either party. I want the truth. I want what other countries are told about us and our policies. I want to hear what the rest of the world thinks about anthing. I do not want our soldiers dying and being maimed put somewhere on the back page or the snippet of sound bite about how many died today. We owe them for their blood for us no matter how we view the war. If our collective asses are not in uniform then we should bow down to those who are willing and able to fight for us. We should never be censored by the government but we are. The government, this administration for sure has sheilded so much informaiont from us that what value is what we have been told? I know they lie to us. They take old stories which we know not to be true and spoon feed them to us over and over. Who in the news speaks to that? Keith O. I know others like the news channel for their party which should not ever happen. Fox is republican through and through. When did our country say a channel should be devoted to such a thing? Fair and balanced, been a long time since I saw it and maybe it wasn't real then either.
MSNBC is completely pro-obama and anti-hillary. Its disgusting to watch.
Keith Olberman thinks he's Edward R. Murrow? No. With that giant head and caterpillar eyebrows its muchmore like Eddie Munster. Rachel Maddow is a little lefty yap dog, who claims to understand "what makes a dem a dem" and villifies HRC nightly.
Matthews has an illness. He is screaming about who has "more delegates, more states, more delegatets AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
Chuck Todd comes on daily to reminds us "hillary cant win hillary cant win hillary cant win"
Norah O'Donnel practically grits her teeth when she speaks of Hillary, and stimulates herself when speaking of Obama.
Why is this even legal? Shouldnt they have to have a dislclaimer saying "this is an opinion network, not news"?
Wish the MSM would get over this idea of "Fairness equals both sides of the story being told."
Guess what? Sometimes there are more than two sides to a story, like three. Or five. And sometimes the "other" side to a story is totally manufactured and intellectually fraudulent. So, the people who don't believe in "global warming"--does that mean they're FOR more pollution and environmental destruction?
Just look at how the MSM has been whipsawed over Clinton's claim that the Obama's press coverage is too favorable/hers is too misogynist. We get pendulum swings of pandering to each candidate, instead of actually addressing the latent misogyny in media coverage of Clinton's campaign. (I say this as a staunch Obama supporter.
And since when did journalistic "vetting" entail pursuing every last scrap of negative campaigning each side's private investigators dredged up about the other?
I'd like to see accountability journalism by journalists applied to candidate claims.
Dear Sundialsvc4: You comments do not hit hard because I am not the press corps. My profession is not political reporting. I have never worked in a newsroom. I am a press critic and a scholar with a PhD who studies the press. And I am not writing long apologetic articles about the journalism profession. I'm trying to figure out what's going on when someone like Walter Pincus declares neutrality a sham.
I know, I know: he's doing it because the media are in business to make money.
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Posted March 17, 2008 | 10:57 PM (EST)