I wish there were more people like Jules Witcover in our sad excuse for a political press corps. He's one of those old-fashioned journalists who actually sees himself as having some responsibility to his readers. He even checks his facts instead of going with the conventional wisdom.
Those qualities are on display in The new Teflon Don Baltimore Sun 05/12/04. Besides the Bush Administraton's failure to hold high-level officialsresponsible for torture in the gulag:
Other calamitous administration performances also have not been chastised. The failure to back up the intelligence claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraqi hands, which Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney used to justify the pre-emptive invasion, has not seemed to shake the tenure of CIA Director George J. Tenet.
The role of Mr. Cheney hasn't been diminished, either, by his firm assurances that American troops would be met as liberators in Iraq. Nor have those administration numbers-crunchers who insisted that revenue from the liberated Iraqi oil fields would more than pay for the reconstruction.
Also, the disastrous miscalculations about the post-invasion challenges to the occupying forces, the number of troops needed and the cost to be paid in American lives and dollars all seem to be fatherless. To paraphrase an earlier wartime leader, never have so many suffered from so many screw-ups committed by so few acknowledged perpetrators.
Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have mouthed the usual empty acceptances of responsibility, but the Teflon administration continues to go its unfazed way. A Cold War president, John F. Kennedy, observed after his own fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 that "victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan." You can say that again.
4 comments:
In response to: "I wish there were more people like Jules Witcover in our sad excuse for a political press corps. He's one of those old-fashioned journalists who actually sees himself as having some responsibility to his readers."
As someone who works in television -- thought not for the political press corps, thankfully -- I wonder how you can complain about the constant attempts at political character assassination and then turn around and suggest that today's journalists don't feel any responsibility to their readers.
As for Witcover's piece, it WAS NOT a NEWS REPORT. It was a commentary, in the OP/ED section of the Baltimore Sun. I'm not surprised that you're willing to elevate Whitcover to such a high status since he's doing a COMMENTARY that agrees with your feelings.
I'm quite surprised, however, that you lump the other "journalists" into the category of having no sense of responsibility to their readers. Is this not the same kind of tactic ultra-conservatives use when they try to insist that those who question their position must be "unpatriotic?" Those journalists who don't turn out commentaries that side with you have no sense of responsibility to their readers?
The pressures of daily news gathering does not always allow for immediately available "in depth analysis" of every fact. To be fair, journalists must get both sides of the story. A journalist's job isn't to spoon-feed you everything: a journalist is supposed to present both sides of the story so that YOU can decide what is and isn't reasonable. The fact that you have been able to make such a clear determination, long before Mr. Whitcover's essay, would seem to indicate that the journalists you denounce are doing what they're supposed to do, after all.
I'm not sure I quite follow your comment on this one, Patrick.
Witcover is a columnist, but he still does original reporting as well, as in covering the Presidential campaign. His latest column (not the one above) is based on an interview he did with Dennis Kucinich. He recently published a book-length history of the Democratic Party.
My brief comment above obviously paints conventional political columnists with a broad brush. It was meant to emphasize the pleasant contrast that Witcover's usually excellent work is to run-of-the-mill political reporting and commentary - even that at some of the leading news organizations.
Political commentary in particular has been largely overwhelmed by partisan spin, which is not the same as political or ideological perspective. But the worst problem is not partisanship as such, but laziness. Laziness in fact-checking, laziness (and lack of funds) in follow-up on important stories.
The worst case of dishonesty and irresponsibility I've seen in the last year or so was not Jason Blair, it was the *New York Times'* Judith Miller, whose often sloppily-sourced stories about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" turned out to have been nothing more than passing on false information from Iraqi exile groups. The *Times* never should have reported most of that stuff. And once it turned out that the sources had lied to her, it seems to me she and the *Times* had an ethical duty to tell who lied to them, since Miller's fake stories in the *Times* became an important factor in the public and Congressional willingness to go to war.
Also, the "both sides of a story" approach is often a trap. Sometimes a story has more than one side. But when one "side" is completely bogus - like Judith Miller's WMD stories - giving it equal presentation with a more responsible take on the issue doesn't provide "balance." It just gives undue credibility to a lie. - Bruce
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In response to: "The "both sides of a story" approach is often a trap. Sometimes a story has more than one side. But when one "side" is completely bogus - like Judith Miller's WMD stories - giving it equal presentation with a more responsible take on the issue doesn't provide "balance." It just gives undue credibility to a lie."
Bruce, I can think of NO story that doesn't have AT LEAST two sides. You may not agree with both sides, but all stories have at least two and almost always have more angles than that.
There is a big difference between commentary, which is SUPPOSED to be an opinion-based take on the facts (and hopefully always supported by lucid, logical reasoning), and journalism, which is SUPPOSED to be an UNBIASED presentation of the facts. While I agree with you that facts are missed by reporters who are handed information and don't always check their sources, I cannot agree with your assessment of what constitutes "balance."
A commentator is free to put his own "spin" on a story by downplaying a side that is obviously uncredible. A journalist MUST give equal treatment to both sides so that you, the news consumer, can make up your own mind about how you feel. This shouldn't come as a surprise.
The "truth" in commentary comes when the commentator hands you facts that support THEIR argument; the truth in journalism comes when the reporter hands you BOTH SIDES and you decide for yourself.
When you look at a news story that is "balanced," and you know that one side is lying, but the reporter hasn't come right out and said, "He's lying," then the reporter has done his job by presenting a detached, unbiased view of the facts.
Valuable resource of relevant news summaries: http://www.ng2000.com/fw.php?tp=administration
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