Still True Today

Nick Beaudrot recommends James Fallows:

Before there was Digby, or before The Assault on Reason, there was James Fallows. When you've got half an hour, read his 1996 piece "Why Americans Hate the Media", wherein you will discover that everything old is new again. If I ran the Washington Post newsroom, I'd make every political reporter read this during their first day on the job, and again annually thereafter.

I took Nick's advice, and it's good advice. My initial plan was to read the piece and excerpt some good parts if I liked it, but as I was reading I would up marking up way too many "key" paragraphs and "crucial" insights (this is, perhaps, the sign of a really great article -- a blogger can't write a good post about it) to bother picking. This story by Fallows, also on the media, though looking specifically at the coverage of Monica Lewinksy and impeachment, is also great.

PS, he mentions a discussion in the article that can be seen here.

UPDATE: Jim emails to say that even though the date on the linked American Prospect article here says 2002, it was actually published in March 1999.

Comments

The Fallows piece seems to rely heavily on Thomas Patterson's Out of Order, which is still one of the best books on American media coverage of politics--and probably of the presidential selection process, too. Link.

Posted by Emery | July 30, 2007 8:53 AM

Man, for Jennings and Wallace to sit there and say that not only would they not do something to warn people walking into an ambush, but that they also think that's the right thing to do makes me sick to my stomach...

Posted by TW Andrews | July 30, 2007 10:15 AM

Yeah, that's a pretty interesting / startling / powerful anecdote. I think it's interesting that the way Fallows recounts it Jennings was basically shamed / browbeaten by Wallace's gravitas mojo, and he had what I consider to be the more honorable first instinct. I haven't been able to watch the video, but I think it would be an interesting question to explore while shifting the relationship of the reporter and the nationality of the troops who were about to be attacked. Jennings wasn't American, but presumably he felt some considerable connection to the U.S. - would he have changed his response if the troops were Canadian? Would he have given his initial response if the troops were Italian, or Japanese (i.e., nominal allies of his country's, but not his countrymen). I assume that if coverage of the war were of purely journalistic interest - if the U.S./Canada had no explicit stake in the outcome of the Kosanese conflict - it never would've occurred to him to intervene.

And (something I find myself saying about once every five years) Newt's on the money here. Twenty years later, I'd still bet most journalists haven't done a fraction the consideration on this that the military has. Maybe the majority of reporters would have the instinctive reaction I consider honorable - Jennings' initial response - and maybe not, but one way or another I suspect few have thought it out.

Posted by Quarterican | July 30, 2007 10:37 AM

Matt is right that so much of it is worth reading for the ideas that it's tough to quote particular paragraphs, but if I had to pick just one, this is a pretty good choice for a summary of the article:

As with medieval doctors who applied leeches and trepanned skulls, the practitioners cannot be blamed for the limits of their profession.

Posted by Cyrus | July 30, 2007 11:52 AM

Wow. That was an awesome article. I loved the Colonel's response: "I feel utter contempt".

The article doesn't get into it, but I think there is a reason Wallace browbeats Jennings there. If the reporters' mission starts to get questioned, the rationale breaks down pretty quickly. So part of the reporter ethos is to browbeat anyone who steps across the party line. Its pretty clear what the ethical human instinct is there. And its notable that Wallace doesn't feel its necessary to actually offer any real justification for his position, to weight the pros and cons, to compare the benefits to the platoon versus the cost of investigative penetration among the North Kosanese operations. No- Wallace refusing to even discuss situations where the reporter does have a higher calling. And the reason is because once you start comparing the duties of the reporter to other humans and his duties to his profession, the profession starts to look pretty weak.

Posted by mpowell | July 30, 2007 3:12 PM

The sad thing is, I think there was a valid argument to be had there about a principle, but that exact hypothetical was the wrong way to get it started and those people were the wrong people to have it. Should some people be devoted to truth, or The Truth if you want be pretentious, on an equally or arguably greater level than they are to their country? Yes. (For what it's worth, the question in the panel discussion was very vague, and I could definitely understand giving a different answer if certain details had been supplied. The most important of those details is whether there would have been a serious story with larger implications to be gained or just sensationalistic footage of a skirmish.) I mean, if the same question had been posed to two Quakers, there probably would have been a lively debate, and I would, at worst, respectfully disagree with someone who kept his mouth shut for a reason like that. Newt Gingrich was right (gag) to say that the journalists had apparently thought their answers through very little, which is unfortunate.

Posted by Cyrus | July 30, 2007 3:26 PM

Wow. Bertrand Russell wrote that he'd never die for his beliefs because he might be wrong. Nobody should believe any theory too dogmatically, not even his own.

It seems that 20 years ago, Jennings and Wallace might have actually believed in something. Journalism is a higher calling to report the news. Quotidian concerns, such as who lives, dies, succeeds, fails, wins or loses be damned.

Wallace's answer was disgusting in the Ayn Rand, philosophical train wreck tradition of "principles" taken too far. It's also shocking for the precious little evidence of any such belief, in his journalistic career since.

Reading this today makes me wonder: What happened? Today it's ALL about who wins and loses. For Wallace and FOX in particular, it's all about helping Republicans win.

Posted by Jalmari | July 30, 2007 3:52 PM

Jalmari,

I think you hit on the important point there. You can make an argument for journalism as a higher calling... but that's not why Wallace took the position he did. Wallace took that position b/c it is a convenient one for journalists (him included) to take. And the principle of self-interest has been a consistent one throughout his career.

Posted by mpowell | July 30, 2007 5:08 PM

Any surprise that pampered celebrities have more difficulty imagining extreme hardship scenarios than combat veterans do?

Posted by STS | July 30, 2007 5:43 PM

Bertrand Russell wrote that he'd never die for his beliefs because he might be wrong.

That would mean that Russell might die for his beliefs. No?

Posted by Rex | July 30, 2007 5:48 PM

The take away for me from this article is to turn off the tv, skip the editorial pages, and just stick to the actual "news" part of the newspaper.

For instance, ever since the Times Select wall went up and I stopped watching cable, I feel that I'm actually a lot better informed about what's going on.

Posted by Peter Bautista | July 30, 2007 5:58 PM

“There doesn't seem to be any way to [register unhappiness] with the press, except to stop watching and reading, which more and more people have done."

Shouldn’t the market replace arrogant purveyors of vapid commentary with real journalists, whose curiosities are closer to those of the average news reader/consumer? Why are people ceasing to watch and read (even more since 1997) rather than creating a burgeoning market for the analysis that Fallows contends we watchers/readers crave?

I fear that Fallows is wrong in his Tocqueville-ian convictions about what the average American wants, and that Postman is closer in arguing that we have lost not just our access to information but our sense of what it is to be informed. It is to have dumb fun watching horse-race politics.

Posted by noonday owl | August 1, 2007 1:26 AM

Jalmari, come on, the article discusses MIKE Wallace, not his son and Fox anchorman, Chris. Mike Wallace is about as liberal a journalist as you'll find. However, your observation about the lack of evidence of adherence to principles would still apply.

Posted by Roger Rainey | August 1, 2007 4:17 PM