I was a precoscious child. In kindergarten, we had an actual air raid drill (it was 1970; I never had one after kindergarten) and I was yelled at by my teacher because I asked the obvious question - the North Vietnamese couldn't bomb my little village in upstate NY, so what was all the fuss? My mother still has a paper I turned in to my teacher in second grade in which, practicing declarative sentences with multiple subjects, I wrote, "Mitchell and Stans are guilty." My teacher had scrawled several question marks after the sentence, and apparently (I have completely forgotten the incident) I filled her in that John Mitchell was the former Attorney General and Maurice Stans was the former finance chair of the Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, and I was airing my views on whether or not they had both lied under oath and committed various and sundry other crimes.
I was entranced by Watergate as a small child. It was like this wierd, wonderful movie, with all these characters of dubious morality, with the intrepid reporters on the trail, and the Congressional Cavalry riding in at the last minute after Nixon fired Archibald Cox (apparently, even then, a Democratic Congress couldn't care less if a President repeatedly violated the law; they just didn't like their prerogatives stepped all over).
While my mind has changed about many things, that initial impression still lingers - a certain romantic view of all things Washington. I still believe that Woodstein's reporting on the whole thing was among the best investigative journalism ever, and that neither Woodward, and certainly not Bernstein, have ever again done anything remotely as important or well-crafted since. They did provide a glimpse of what real journalism could be - and the threat it posed to those in power.
The past nine years have also provided a glimpse in to the ways journalism operates, and the differences between then and now could not be more stark (I start, arbitrarily it might seem, with the Lewinsky/impeachment business, but it should be noted that one could go all the way back to Whitewater). For me, the realization that something was not only rotten in journalism, but that journalists were almost completely devoid of any serious analytical skills or sense of responsibility was Sam Donaldson's now-infamous remark, the weekend after the Lewinsky scandal broke, the Clinton "would" resign within a week. I watched the original broadcast, and sat there absolutely dumb-founded. Even thinking about it all these years later, I am still dumb-founded.
Bob Somerby began The Daily Howler website in part because of the constant shoddy, often truly inept, work of journalists during the Clinton years. While I find his constant harping on Election 2000 a bit off-putting, I also understand his point. Had journalists acted like professional adults, instead of a clique of high school kids deciding who was in and out, who was cool, who a nerd, our world would be a very different place today, because Al Gore would have been elected President. This, not the September 11th attacks, changed everything.
So, my feelings about journalism and journalists stem from a remebered, child-like reverence for (in my child's-mind) heroes; and a mature view of journalists as vanguards of information. Because they are a true medium in the original sense of acting-between those who have information and those who desire information, their role and work should be subject to almost constant scrutiny, not just among themselves as a profession, but by non-journalists as well who should demand quality work meeting certain minimal standards that are, sadly, much higher than their recent work.
One of the complaints many on both the left and right have - and I think the fact that (a) the complaint spans the ideological spectrum; and (b) there is abundant evidence to support it as more than a complaint or accusation, but just the way things are - is there is too cozy a relationship between members of the press and Washington officials. This goes beyond this administration, although I believe that, because of the numerous failures and failings of this administration, the continued chuminess needs to stop. As evidenced by the recent Roundtable at the National Press Club with Tony Snow and members of the White House Press Corps, the defensiveness, and refusal to acknowledge outside accountability, along with an almost panting shared love between Snow and these reporters, shows us there is something horribly wrong. Ana Marie Cox at Swampland may call complaints like mine the prattlings of "conspiracy theorists", but they are not. The very idea that reporters and those whom they cover should both sit in their crying corner and bewail citizen commentary upon the work they do shows us something is desparately wrong with the entire situation.
Some of what is wrong extends beyond simple sycophancy. Some of those among our elite reporters and commentators are startlingly stupid, shallow people, who mistake access with insight, and print-inches with success and acceptability. As Somerby wrote today about Maureen Dowd, :How does warm flesh get this dumb?" Klein, Broder, and Thom Friedman are other examples of those held in high esteem, for reasons that totally escape many non-journalists. It isn't just their egregious pandering, their pose as neutral arbiters, and the philosopher-king view they hold of themselves; they are often wrong, their advice is sub-par, their insight rarely matched by any real wisdom.
On a larger scale, our journalists tend to share a pack mentatlity, and they try to shape narratives that usually have only a passing acquaintance with the truth. Somerby has done a magnificent job detailing, and destroying, the patchwork quilt of lies that developed around Al Gore in Campaign 2000, and even the entire fabric of the mainstream narrative about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Yet, we are seeing, again, that these same journalists, proven so egregiously wrong for the past nine years, and publicly proven wrong, simply will not surrender to reality. They allow envy, spite, and small-mindedness to color everything they write and say about candidates; they would rather construct a narrative than follow one. A good example, and one randomly picked from recent days concerns Hillary Clinton, and can be found here. There is nothing surprising, or even remotely interesting about this story - Sen. Clinton has been endorsed by some influential African-American state legislators in South Carolina. A reporter found out that these politicians also had relationships with a firm that Sen. Clinton did. This is a story?
Of course, the sub-text (and sub-texts are clear, but always dismissed by reporters) for this is that (a) Clinton is a strong-arming bitch, whose well-oiled machine is finessing support among those who might otherwise not support her; and (b) these nefarious relationships are part of an entire web of nefarious relationships that call into question Sen. Clinton's integrity, morality, and qualifications for the Presidency. A non-story about a perfectly acceptable and common occurrence - politicans sharing relationships with various PR firms and other groups - becomes part and parcel of a larger unstsated narrative in which Clinton's corruption is assumed beforehand; this is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
This is the kind of nonsense that has to be called out and stopped. Part of the lesson Somerby and others are trying to pound in to our heads is that we need to be wary of these kinds of narratives. We can't stop lazy, stupid reporters from spreading rumors and false stories; we can debunk them, and demand accountability for such non-journalistic nonsense. We are getting better at it, but we need to keep up the work.
this is why I harp on Broder and Klein. Some, such as the folks at Sadly!No spend their time tearing apart the right-wing blogs. Others, such as Glenn Greenwald, take on both the mainstream press and right-wing blogs. Me - I am a small, part-time outfit, a Z-level blogger with a tiny readership, so I have to limit myself. I therefore limit myself to the nonsense spouted by those with the most influence. Of course, the question of who listens is important, but at leastmy view, like so many millions of others, is out there. Our country deserves better than David Broder and Joe Klein, just like we deserve better than George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Virtual Tin Cup
