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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| President Obama and the media: a game of flattery and deceit | President Obama and the media: a game of flattery and deceit |
| (4 months later) | |
| It's difficult to say who's happier about the recent spate of troubles in the Obama White House, specifically the revelations about administration investigations into the activities of news organizations and individual journalists. Is it the Republicans, whose glee has finally found a source that doesn't coincide with the misery of every day Americans? (That's the problem with pegging your campaigns to Obama's inability to get the economy going – you have to actively block his attempts to get the economy going). Or is it the press that's the truly delighted party here, as they have finally found a narrative that is as critical of the Obama administration as it is laudatory of their own role in the great pageant of democracy? President Obama and his team may overstep its bounds in attempts to squash individual stories, but it's the cozy culture of Washington favor-trading that makes the protections of the First Amendment irrelevant. Most of the time, being a reporter means taking crap from people. I've never held to the truism that pissing off "both sides" means you're somehow doing the job correctly. For one thing, it suggests that there's just two sides to any story, and while I do think the world can be divided into just two groups if you want, it's not the "left and right" that matter so much as the "haves and have-nots". But it is true that doing the job correctly does not directly translate into praise. A reporter that's regularly doing a really great job reporting is mostly tolerated by the powers that be and largely unnoticed by the public at large. The kinds of information that are the greatest threat to those in power don't have to do with secrets so much as process; they detail the crimes against democracy that take place daily, not in the cover of night. They are not blockbuster stories; they are largely sleepers. Indeed, Project Censored's annual list of "most censored" stories is, invariably, a collection of articles that were censored so much as to be passed over: the role of slave-wage labor in the US economy (and how the military abets it), the widening gap in wealth between our elected representatives and those that elected them, the way that private philanthropy has usurped parents in shaping public education. Covered primarily by special interest publications, none of these stories drew the attention of federal investigations, though they are arguably just as damning as any single foreign policy misdeed. Yes, the Obama administration has continued – and in some ways improved on – the cold war between any given party and the journalists that cover it. But administrations don't have to censor a press that simply doesn't report. The greatest threat to freedom of the press in America isn't incarceration, it's indifference. The ambitions of journalists are shaped by a sensitivity to what the American people are interested in. Those interests consist mainly of pop stars, diets, and sensational murders, so political journalists adapt to the warped priorities of insular Washington. Access and flattery are the chief currencies, so while most reporters at mainstream media outlets have personal worldviews more in line with the Obama administration than with the Republican members of Congress, the constant harping by conservatives on the MSM is a kind of informational picket line. When a story comes along that suggests that conservatives and reporters have a common enemy, it's the beginning of the kind of awkward romance: "See, we're not so different!" Reporters get to engage in the self-flattering fantasy that their craft can be separated from agendas; conservatives feel vindicated for their martyrdom. But read between the lines of any until-now private correspondence between the leaker and the leakee and what's consistent is the same exchange of flattery and influence that characterizes what's happening on the front pages right now: Fox News reporter James Rosen gushed to his source constantly: "You are most perceptive and I appreciate your inquiry". He wrote, and signed one email, "Hugs and kisses". And the obsequiousness extended to policy; his most insidious lure was a promise to use leaked information to "force the administration's hand to go in the right direction," not exactly a fair or balanced notion. Reporters digging down from a different location on the ideological spectrum act no differently: During the Bush administration, a House committee report unearthed an email from then-AP reporter Ron Fournier to then-White House adviser Karl Rove complimenting Rove for his part in maintaining American military might: | It's difficult to say who's happier about the recent spate of troubles in the Obama White House, specifically the revelations about administration investigations into the activities of news organizations and individual journalists. Is it the Republicans, whose glee has finally found a source that doesn't coincide with the misery of every day Americans? (That's the problem with pegging your campaigns to Obama's inability to get the economy going – you have to actively block his attempts to get the economy going). Or is it the press that's the truly delighted party here, as they have finally found a narrative that is as critical of the Obama administration as it is laudatory of their own role in the great pageant of democracy? President Obama and his team may overstep its bounds in attempts to squash individual stories, but it's the cozy culture of Washington favor-trading that makes the protections of the First Amendment irrelevant. Most of the time, being a reporter means taking crap from people. I've never held to the truism that pissing off "both sides" means you're somehow doing the job correctly. For one thing, it suggests that there's just two sides to any story, and while I do think the world can be divided into just two groups if you want, it's not the "left and right" that matter so much as the "haves and have-nots". But it is true that doing the job correctly does not directly translate into praise. A reporter that's regularly doing a really great job reporting is mostly tolerated by the powers that be and largely unnoticed by the public at large. The kinds of information that are the greatest threat to those in power don't have to do with secrets so much as process; they detail the crimes against democracy that take place daily, not in the cover of night. They are not blockbuster stories; they are largely sleepers. Indeed, Project Censored's annual list of "most censored" stories is, invariably, a collection of articles that were censored so much as to be passed over: the role of slave-wage labor in the US economy (and how the military abets it), the widening gap in wealth between our elected representatives and those that elected them, the way that private philanthropy has usurped parents in shaping public education. Covered primarily by special interest publications, none of these stories drew the attention of federal investigations, though they are arguably just as damning as any single foreign policy misdeed. Yes, the Obama administration has continued – and in some ways improved on – the cold war between any given party and the journalists that cover it. But administrations don't have to censor a press that simply doesn't report. The greatest threat to freedom of the press in America isn't incarceration, it's indifference. The ambitions of journalists are shaped by a sensitivity to what the American people are interested in. Those interests consist mainly of pop stars, diets, and sensational murders, so political journalists adapt to the warped priorities of insular Washington. Access and flattery are the chief currencies, so while most reporters at mainstream media outlets have personal worldviews more in line with the Obama administration than with the Republican members of Congress, the constant harping by conservatives on the MSM is a kind of informational picket line. When a story comes along that suggests that conservatives and reporters have a common enemy, it's the beginning of the kind of awkward romance: "See, we're not so different!" Reporters get to engage in the self-flattering fantasy that their craft can be separated from agendas; conservatives feel vindicated for their martyrdom. But read between the lines of any until-now private correspondence between the leaker and the leakee and what's consistent is the same exchange of flattery and influence that characterizes what's happening on the front pages right now: Fox News reporter James Rosen gushed to his source constantly: "You are most perceptive and I appreciate your inquiry". He wrote, and signed one email, "Hugs and kisses". And the obsequiousness extended to policy; his most insidious lure was a promise to use leaked information to "force the administration's hand to go in the right direction," not exactly a fair or balanced notion. Reporters digging down from a different location on the ideological spectrum act no differently: During the Bush administration, a House committee report unearthed an email from then-AP reporter Ron Fournier to then-White House adviser Karl Rove complimenting Rove for his part in maintaining American military might: |
| "The Lord creates [heroes] like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight." | "The Lord creates [heroes] like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight." |
| More recently, NBC's David Gregory held out to the press office of Mark Sanford the guarantee of a "fair shake" and "put[ting] all this" – you know, adultery and abuse of his office – mostly aside for coming on "Meet the Press". The flattery, the massaging of ego, the promise of tit for tat – these are the constants of access journalism, and reminders that ultimately it's not antagonism that chills free speech, but chumminess. Systematically, the only difference between what James Rosen said to State Department source Stephen Jin-Woo Kim and what White House reporters regularly say to White House sources is that Kim was not as disciplined. Reporters' eagerness for access is regularly used to advance agendas. Sometimes that agenda coincides with unfettered information/the national good, sometimes it interferes with an administration's agenda, and sometimes it advances a specific ideology/policy. Often, the only reason these relationships come to light is that either the reporter or the source got burned. Most of the time, the reporter and the source both walk away happy, but it's the American public, if not democracy itself, that suffers. The lazy, daisy-chain-of-comforting-fictions that led up to the Iraq War a case in point. My regretful suspicion is that we can't stop leaks and we can't stop government investigations into the leaks that displease those in power. We can only pay more attention. Think about those Project Censored stories: if more reporters were more well-rewarded (with attention as well as more tangible success) for the kind of tedious stories that expose quotidian abuses of power rather than the happily more infrequent outrageous violations, then government might develop a habit of honesty, rather than a fitful manipulation of the truth. But what do I know? As White House press secretary Jay Carney told the assembled press corps Wednesday, maybe the issue isn't that the media and officials are so jointly invested in a mutual admiration society, maybe "the problem is that there are a lot of you and you are good at your jobs and you're smart and we almost invariably do not anticipate every question that you ask". | More recently, NBC's David Gregory held out to the press office of Mark Sanford the guarantee of a "fair shake" and "put[ting] all this" – you know, adultery and abuse of his office – mostly aside for coming on "Meet the Press". The flattery, the massaging of ego, the promise of tit for tat – these are the constants of access journalism, and reminders that ultimately it's not antagonism that chills free speech, but chumminess. Systematically, the only difference between what James Rosen said to State Department source Stephen Jin-Woo Kim and what White House reporters regularly say to White House sources is that Kim was not as disciplined. Reporters' eagerness for access is regularly used to advance agendas. Sometimes that agenda coincides with unfettered information/the national good, sometimes it interferes with an administration's agenda, and sometimes it advances a specific ideology/policy. Often, the only reason these relationships come to light is that either the reporter or the source got burned. Most of the time, the reporter and the source both walk away happy, but it's the American public, if not democracy itself, that suffers. The lazy, daisy-chain-of-comforting-fictions that led up to the Iraq War a case in point. My regretful suspicion is that we can't stop leaks and we can't stop government investigations into the leaks that displease those in power. We can only pay more attention. Think about those Project Censored stories: if more reporters were more well-rewarded (with attention as well as more tangible success) for the kind of tedious stories that expose quotidian abuses of power rather than the happily more infrequent outrageous violations, then government might develop a habit of honesty, rather than a fitful manipulation of the truth. But what do I know? As White House press secretary Jay Carney told the assembled press corps Wednesday, maybe the issue isn't that the media and officials are so jointly invested in a mutual admiration society, maybe "the problem is that there are a lot of you and you are good at your jobs and you're smart and we almost invariably do not anticipate every question that you ask". |
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