Carpe Datum

Krugman and the Press

First off, I have to say that I enjoyed watching "Return of the King" again. Yes, it has too many endings, but so does the book. I can't wait to see what's in the extended edition. We watched some of the special features on the 2nd disk last night, and I can safely say that I have never had a better experience while watching a documentary film. I'll just leave it at that.

Anyway, Paul Krugman has an interesting column from a few days ago and the press and the Bush administration. This is partly because the New York Times has recently written a piece saying they're questioning their own pre-Iraq reporting (i.e. Judith Miller's reprinting of baseless nonsense from Chalabi and his pals) and partly because he thinks there's some dogpiling going on because Bush is down in the polls.

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush's problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush's "infallibility complex" more than two years ago, and I wasn't being original.

So why did the press credit Mr. Bush with virtues that reporters knew he didn't possess? One answer is misplaced patriotism. After 9/11 much of the press seemed to reach a collective decision that it was necessary, in the interests of national unity, to suppress criticism of the commander in chief.

Another answer is the tyranny of evenhandedness. Moderate and liberal journalists, both reporters and commentators, often bend over backward to say nice things about conservatives. Not long ago, many commentators who are now caustic Bush critics seemed desperate to differentiate themselves from "irrational Bush haters" who were neither haters nor irrational — and whose critiques look pretty mild in the light of recent revelations.

And some journalists just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the president of the United States was being dishonest about such grave matters.

Finally, let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative about the president, you had to be prepared for an avalanche of hate mail. You had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation, and you had to worry about being denied access to the sort of insider information that is the basis of many journalistic careers.

The Bush administration, knowing all this, played the press like a fiddle. But has that era come to an end?

A new Pew survey finds 55 percent of journalists in the national media believing that the press has not been critical enough of Mr. Bush, compared with only 8 percent who believe that it has been too critical. More important, journalists seem to be acting on that belief.

Amazing things have been happening lately. The usual suspects have tried to silence reporting about prison abuses by accusing critics of undermining the troops — but the reports keep coming. The attorney general has called yet another terror alert — but the press raised questions about why. (At a White House morning briefing, Terry Moran of ABC News actually said what many thought during other conveniently timed alerts: "There is a disturbing possibility that you are manipulating the American public in order to get a message out.")

It may not last. In July 2002, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post — who has tried, at great risk to his career, to offer a realistic picture of the Bush presidency — "the White House press corps showed its teeth" for the first time since 9/11. It didn't last: the administration beat the drums of war, and most of the press relapsed into docility.

But this time may be different. And if it is, Mr. Bush — who has always depended on that docility — may be in even more trouble than the latest polls suggest.

I think most of this is wishful thinking. The press still isn't holding Bush personally accountable for anything bad that happens on his watch. They ask if anyone is going to resign, and when Bush says no, they're all doing a superb job in fact, the press walks away befuddled. At some point, the press needs to start connecting the dots and demanding some accountability from Bush.

Instead, we're going to get more stories about whether Kerry threw his medals or his ribbons (and what was Bush doing at that time, again? oh yeah, he was going AWOL, and the press *still* isn't doing what it should to prove it), more stories about Kerry "flip-flops" from 15 years ago (without any corresponding references to Bush's numerous flip-flips from 15 freakin' DAYS ago), more stories about Kerry's wealth and "patrician manner", etc. It's going to be the Al Gore invented the Internet bullshit all over again. It has already started.

Remember that Al Gore speech from a few days ago? Already I've heard three different people in casual contexts mention that "wasn't that sponsored by MoveOn.org, the same ones who compared Bush to Hitler?" Isn't it nice to be able to think like that? To completely dismiss everything in the speech without thinking about it? Holy fucking shit, when I say Moron Americans, I really do mean Moron Americans.

I mentioned this a while back, and I showed what an absolutely ridiculous claim it is, but the conventional wisdom these days about MoveOn.org ("they're so liberal, they think Bush is Hitler!") is purely a product of the mainstream media propagating the idea. Of course, all the conservatives who have compared Clinton or Hillary with Nazis or worse in the past, they are given a free pass by the same media.

So while I do appreciate Krugman's cautious optimism, I think history calls for a lot more cynicism when it comes to our ridiculous press and the people it successfully manipulates because (for whatever reason) they just don't want to be bothered to think things through themselves. You want to know what MoveOn.org stands for, go visit their freakin' website and find out! It's easy to find since it is their name and everything. They're critical, sure, but they aren't irresponsible. They back all their claims up extensively, if you care to check, and they aren't the ones throwing around terms like "feminazi".

Posted by Observer at May 29, 2004 07:29 AM