Earlier today, in an interview with NBC's Today Show host Matt Lauer, the president of Russia Vladimir Putin, took a verbal jab at Vice President Cheney's statements that the Russian government "has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of the [Russian] people" and that "other actions by the Russian government have been counterproductive and could begin to affect relations with other countries" ... go here for the story and video along with it.
Though I think Cheney was right to say what he said, this post is not exactly in defense of Cheney. Choosing between Cheney and Putin is a bit like trying to decide which of the least rotten apples to eat that are left at the bottom of the fruit basket. We could probably say something similar about at least 50% of world leaders, if not more. But watching this interview one couldn't help but feel that Lauer was either getting easily played by Putin, or, tossing easy softballs up there for Putin to strike back at the Bush administration's criticism of the backsliding of Russian democratic progress. I'm not sure which is worse. Thankfully there was some much better balanced reporting from Andrea Mitchell later in the segment.
There are a number of problems with Lauer's interview with Putin.
First is the use of Lauer at all. This is a systemic problem in the mainstream media. Times were, as near as fifteen to twenty years ago, that major news networks would have correspondents permanently based in important foreign capitals: Moscow, London, Beijing, Paris, to name just a few. Now much of the news from abroad, like this G-8 Summit, is covered by "face" reporters, the big name celebrity reporters making the big bucks. They parachute in ahead of the president a day or so before, set up their stories, report them, then get the hell out. We could name ten or so of these "faces" or "names" that get the top gigs around the globe, drop on in, report and leave, without much context or depth. They may as well be reporting from the Moon. This leads to a huge lack of involvement and knowledge about the situation on the ground, no matter how good a journalist might happen to be.
Second, Lauer's interview with Putin falls into the trap of framing the debate about issues of freedom of expression and democracy in Russia as simply a U.S. v. Russia battle. That "We" support democracy and "They" don't. Part of the problem here is that this simplistic narrative is an outgrowth of what is noted above: the lack of a sustained, permanent NBC presence in the country at question, Russia, and using that person to interview Putin. Why, for instance, didn't Lauer ask Putin ANY question about the situation in Chechnya? The question wouldn't even have to be terribly critical, but could be probing enough to be illuminating. Instead: nothing. Perhaps if Lauer could have given some context to Cheney's arguments about Russia moving away from freedoms it was progressing on, we could have gotten a reasonable answer from Putin. Instead we get soundbyte whack-a-mole, a blustery back and forth of insults without any depth to them. Why, for context, didn't Lauer ask Putin about the legislation that has moved through Russia in recent years giving the Kremlin power to regulate around half-a-million NGOs and public policy organizations operating in the federation? That would provide a little context into why Cheney said what he said, wouldn't it? Instead, Lauer asks about five Russians killed in Iraq, and who's fault it was (the killers, maybe, perhaps?). Yes, he did touch on big issue items such as North Korea and Iran, but then this was framed in a U.S. vs. Russia context.
But Lauer is just doing his job, and probably doing it the best he can, given his duties with the Today Show. It's the Today Show! It's a morning lifestyle program. Get your Putin interview one moment, a recipe for how to use whole-grain pasta the next. Scott Peterson or how to choose a Portuguese red wine? You decide. No wonder people don't know what is news and what isn't anymore. It's all good. Thank God they didn't send Al Roker.
Being there, absorbing the post that you're in, gives much greater depth to the reporting. If you want to get a good look at how U.S. coverage of the world has changed over the past few decades, get yourself a copy of Stephen Hess's International News and Foreign Correspondents, (which was published in 1996, so could probably use a post-9/11 update). Trouble is, keeping a full-time correspondent abroad for a major news organization is pretty expensive, sometimes upwards of $250,000 from some figures I've seen. Since it is so expensive for the big media, they tend to close up shop and then when a big story hits, send in one of their branded top guns, like Lauer. There are ways to change this, of course, with streaming video, audio and broadband technology, supporting enterprising independent journalists at a fraction of the cost. But it's not being done yet. Heck, a news organization (or a conglomerate of them) could support an enterprising young journalist in a place like Sri Lanka on less than $20,000 a year, and that person could probably live pretty well on that amount in Colombo. There's been a civil war going on there on and off for 30 years for those who aren't aware. The journalist wouldn't be saving up a lot of money, but then someone dedicated to their work wouldn't really care. I tried to do something like this from Brussels in 2002, living on around $500 to $1,000 a month, thanks to cheap accommodation, the generosity of friends, and the fact that I can cook well (which tends to make friends more generous). But who cares about Brussels? There really isn't a strong American media presence there, except for wire services and business coverage. If there is mainstream coverage needed, bureaus in London or Paris (or their skeleton crews) send a reporter over for a day or a week to cover some big story. After Washington, D.C., it's the city with the most journalists covering news in the world. It's arguably much more important to transatlantic relations than coverage from Paris, Berlin, London or Rome, but the media has failed to catch up. But it's not a sexy place to be (other than the fine food and plentiful beer), with no sexy stories. In other words it's a bit wonkish and boring, but talking heads and screaming pundits managed to make D.C. interesting, didn't they?
How to break the cycle? How do we get better foreign coverage? I think nonprofits interested in free, independent media expression and in decorporatizing the mainstream media, could support something to this. I write about this (roughly at the moment) over at Audeamus.com. Not with an antiquated donation-based PBS-model, but through a hybrid profit/nonprofit social enterprise. It's not so far fetched, but would take some initiative. There are great examples of how something like this could be done already. Here I point to the work of Kevin Sites, who is currently traveling the world's 'Hot Zone's' as a solo journalist, a SoJo, using every type of media he can carry in his backpack. I'm not sure how much his budget is, how much the support team costs, but for that $250,000 a news organization has to pay for a correspondent in one city, you could possibly have ten SoJo's positioned around the globe like Kevin Sites for around $25,000 each. We could start by sending them to the ten least media friendly nations in the world, if they can get in: Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Iran, China, Eritrea, Laos, Burma, Cuba, and North Korea. Add on ten more to head to Sudan, the Congo, and any other number of failed states. At the very least, ten or twenty more in major world capitals where there isn't enough media presence. Who has the money to do this? Google? Soros? Gates? A fraction of Buffett's largesse to the latter toward an independent broadcasting venture of this sort could help move news, at least some of it, away from being a mere business venture and back to its social mission to inform, educate, and participate.
Lastly, as a footnote, is something that I noticed Lauer doing, and something I often find annoying when American reporters are speaking about international affairs: the use the term "We" to describe the actions of the U.S. government, as in "We feel" or "Our position is" ... thus lumping themselves, the press, rhetorically with the U.S. government. Does anyone else hear this, or even notice?I, as in the viewer, hear this all the time. I noticed Tim Russert doing the same thing the other day. The press is not the government, and the government is not the press. As an example, I don't know if I've ever heard a BBC reporter, when interviewing a leader not from the UK, self-referentially regard themselves as "We" when putting up a position of the UK government toward that foreign leader. Maybe they have, but I listen to the BBC often enough to know that it's not a regular occurrence. To me, it's lazy at its least, and divisive Us vs.Them-ism at its worst.