Watching the Not-Watchdogs
I'm not generally in the habit of taking requests at Tuned In. But then again, I'm not generally in the habit of getting requests at Tuned In. Paul Lukasiak (hardest-workin' poster in the time.com comments sections) asked in the Comments what I thought of last night's Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, "Buying the War," about the press' failure to challenge the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq.
I didn't get a screener of the show, but I Tivoed it out of interest, and if you care about the war or the media today, it's well worth watching. (It's rerunning through the week on PBS stations and it streams online here.)
Most of the information Moyers covers has been in the press before. There are the spectacularly wrong Judith Miller stories in the New York Times. There's the overreliance of the elite press on Ahmed Chalabi, who in turn fed stories to the administration, which would then confirm the stories to reporters (a single source essentially masquerading as two sources). The post-9/11 worries about the "patriotism police." The embarrassingly acquiescent press conference with Bush on the eve of the war. And--one of the few success stories of the coverage, in retrospect--the Knight-Ridder reporters who ran skeptical stories about the WMD claims by talking to lower-level military and intelligence sources, rather than relying on the same top-level sources.
Those stories are familiar to me, though, because I follow this sort of thing. The Moyers reports synthesizes all this information better than anything I've seen on TV (as opposed to, say, print reports like Michael Massing's). And there were a few admissions that were startling even to me: for instance, former CNN chief (and my former boss) Walter Isaacson talking frankly about how their Afghanistan coverage was skewed in a more "patriotic" direction by advertiser complaints. And while MSNBC's firing of Phil Donahue--as too liberal for wartime--has been reported, it was eye-opening to hear him say that the brass ordered his reporters to have two conservative guests for every one liberal. "I was counted as two liberals," he says. Actually, it seems like he was counted as one, plus his liberal guest, but regardless, it hardly seems like Joe Scarborough gets the opposite request.
Moyers is bringing a lot of threads together here, and there are angles I would have liked to see more of. The report focuses a lot, for instance, on the influence of post-9/11 patriotism and journalists relying too much on a close, clubby circle of sources. But he could have followed the money more, giving more of the financial context that, unfortunately, has so much to do with how reporting is done.
After 9/11, the country was in recession, and media was practically in a depression--advertising plummeted, layoffs spread and the business has never really recovered. In that environment, media institutions are under ever more pressure to ingratiate themselves with their advertisers and audiences. Look at MSNBC, which canned Donahue, but loves Keith Olbermann now that the political winds have shifted. (Moyers does make some good points about how cutbacks have led TV and print to rely more on pundits over expensive reporting.) And the report sometimes conflates Washington hard-news reporters with Washington pundits. (Neocon pundits may have been tremendously wrong on the war, but it's not unusual that they would have views reflected by a conservative administration.)
Still, the report is a strong overview about how the press mishandled one of the biggest stories of our time. And some of the most striking details are some of the smallest: like William Kristol (now a Time contributor) making the case for war on cable while "...anthrax..." crawls by on the zipper below his head. And the vast roll call of names of pundits, and their bosses, who declined to be interviewed.
A lot of the coverage of Moyers' shows tends to focus on his politics and how or if they influence his work. Moyers is an advocacy journalist: I don't think he makes any bones about it, nor is he particularly trying to hide anything. When a guy begins his report by saying the White House "took leave of reality" in deciding to go to war, you pretty much know where he stands. But viewers of different beliefs can still take a lot from "Buying the War" on how the press works today--and, more important, how it doesn't.
PS To anticipate a question: No, I'm not going to assess Time's role in the coverage (or lack thereof). First, I'm not Time's ombudsman--besides all the expected conflict issues, I don't think anyone can trust anyone to credibly media-critique the publication he's employed by. But more important, writing for Time's Arts section, I'm not exactly close to the beating heart of our national and world-news coverage decisions. To anticipate a second question: No, I can't force the people at Swampland to weigh in. But you can always try.
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1
thank you. nice review. I'd go hype it over at Swampland, but right now there is an infestation of wingnuts (and people from my side of the aisle too stupid to not ignore them).
As for ideological skewing, I would point out that no "conservative" publications were cited during the show --- just "mainstream" and "liberal" (New Republic, Vanity Fair).
(One rather odd thing.... Isaacson mentions the "patriotism police" in an onscreen interview early on in the show. Later, Moyers quotes the head of MSNBC using the same phrase. )
Like you, I really found out nothing much "new" -- but Moyers did a good job of putting the pieces together for television. If there was any integrity in the media, this would do to journalism what Harvest of Shame did to the treatment of migrant workers.
I fully expect it will be ignored.
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He didn't mention The Weekly Standard in re Kristol? Surprising, but I didn't note it so I'll assume you're right.
I did think it was a little odd that he mentioned Vanity Fair as a pet publication of the elites... which is true enough, but odd in this context since Graydon Carter must be the single big-league editor most vocally and consistently critical of Bush. (Not that this changes the critique of that particular article.) I guess the oblique point is the same made overtly by Eric Boehlert[?] about "Even the liberal New York Times...", itself a takeoff on the classic "Even the liberal New Republic..."
Yes, by all means, let's keep this piece a secret from Swampland.
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I don't watch Bill Moyers. Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity told me not to. Apparently Moyers is the spawn of satan.
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"And the report sometimes conflates Washington hard-news reporters with Washington pundits."
To be fair, so does much of the news-watching public.
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Thank you for your input. I know Paul is hard to ignore, and much harder to avoid. This is an amazing post. Beautiful. I wish I had more to offer.
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Thanks for review. I kept expecting that this review would get the treatment that Stephen Colbert got after the WHCD. First, the majority of the media would ignore the Bill Moyers show. Then, they would call it unfair.
It's good to see someone at Time who is willing to comment on it.
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and people from my side of the aisle too stupid to not ignore them).
Screw you
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8
"Uh, unfair. Already, CBS is calling the piece unfair... Public Eye is getting hammered by their commenters."
Then the media goes on to Phase 3 of the Stephan Colbert treatment: Writing about how angry and vulgar left-wing commenters and bloggers are.
Really, we've seen this all before.
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First the Fourth Estate pushed a decrepit box car into the collective public face as "the Smoking Gun," next thing you know, a recent audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction finds that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of reconstruction funds can not be accounted for...
Where was the press when the reconstruction contracts were distributed without competition and on a cost-plus basis, where the contractors were guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of their costs, so the higher the costs, the higher the profits!
What?, you guys are next in line???!!!
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"And the report sometimes conflates Washington hard-news reporters with Washington pundits."
But it is conflated in Washington. It is hard to tell reporters and pundits apart. What is Andrea Mitchell? Cokie Roberts? Tim Russert? They are reporter/pundit combos.
The most cringeworthy scenes in the Moyers piece; 1) Tim Russert saying he wishes somebody had called him. Apparently he doesn't know it is his job to call and check facts. 2) Bill Safire getting a presidential medal. Sums up the corrupt, incestious relationship between the press and the Bush regime.
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Glenn Greenwald is characteristically excellent on this:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/26/moyers/index.html
Be sure to check out "Update II" re CBS' Knoller's unbelievable head-in-the-sand response. The worst thing he has to say about the White House press corps (and by implication himself) is that they are an "irascible and unlikable bunch". It's as if he thought the problem must be that the press corps asked too many tough questions, dug too hard and wouldn't cut the powers that be a break.
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And some of the most striking details are some of the smallest: like William Kristol (now a Time contributor).
This is one of the men who got everything wrong about the troop levels, the Iraqi reception of American troops, the formation and expansion of the insurgency, the abysmal failure of Paul Bremer's viceroyship and yet I see him all over the landscape and now a writer for Time. He, and the neoconservatives like him, were incredibily wrong about everything so this is how he is rewarded? -
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"When a guy begins his report by saying the White House "took leave of reality" in deciding to go to war, you pretty much know where he stands."
Yeah, he stands on the side of reality. Nice to see for a change...
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"And the report sometimes conflates Washington hard-news reporters with Washington pundits."
Well, yeah, because you guys let it happen. Who is on the news shows? The pundits. Who get the book deals? The pundits. And actual reporters let themselves be marginalized. The public didn't do that-- you did, and your editors did.
Here Time is, closing foreign bureaus, but hiring the overpaid (any pay for them is over) Kristol and Halperin. What are your readers supposed to think?
The problem is, your magazine and other MSM are training readers to expect ill-informed opinion rather than facts. Why? I get the idea that your bosses think Kristol will make them more money, and maybe he will. (It's hard to imagine Mark Halperin brings along a big group of readers, however, so how did THAT happen? It doesn't even seem to make $ sense.)
The for-real reporters should have banded together long ago to save their profession. If the pundits have taken over-- and they have-- and the public assumes that Charles Krauthammer is a reporter, and reporters are supposed to bloviate about any and all subjects, especially those they know nothing about, well, reporters should have spoken up. Goodness knows, we readers out here wanted more than that, but we get dismissed as "partisan" and "nutcases" and such for caring about your profession's ethics and direction.
Silence really doesn't become a journalist. And so your unwillingness to critique your own magazine seems like discretion taken, once again, way too far. If you really think Time/CNN would fire you for that, while paying Glenn Beck to compare Gore to Hitler (because Gore is worried about global warming, that evil guy!), then if I were you, I'd be looking for a better employer.
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lister
you are asking james p to take a hacksaw to his job. he has mouths to feed (possibly), a mortgage to pay, and do you really think anyone else pays what time pays to cover TV?
not a chance. he's in the opinion ghetto of cultural criticism--he's allowed to mouth off exactly as much as he has here. any more and the far better paid kristol will get pissy and talk to the guys who sign everyone's checks.
to be fair, it is hard to credit james with "having a set" if you know what i mean, given that he mentions the extraordinarily wrongheaded kristol without getting into it. a list of kristol's intellectual malfeasance could stretch from LA to NY without missing a red state. truly a repugnant man and time's board should be deeply deeply ashamed. but being rich and powerful these days means never having to say you're sorry.
good luck james.
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Yeah, Robert, I know-- I wouldn't wish unemployment on anyone these days-- lose your salary, your health benefits... Who can blame James for deciding that he's not going to criticize the corp that plays the bills.
But if reporters wonder why no one pays them any mind, it's because there's always something more important than getting the tough story. And reporters in this whole bad period have chosen the easy way out-- all those who knew that Karl Rove was involved in the Plame outing and wrote stories that pretended that "no one" knew....
Eventually this time will be over, and maybe reporters won't have such difficult dilemmas then, when Bush is back on his ranchette.
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 7 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 8 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 9 hours ago
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