Well, There's a Real Square Cat, He Looks Like 1974
By Ed Driscoll · July 03, 2005 10:33 AM · War And Anti-War
Two actually, who are both stuck in the era of All The President's Men. First up, via PoliPundit, is USA Today founder Al Neuharth, who takes us back to that other touchstone of the media, the Tet Offensive, when a CBS anchorman could completely misread a military battle, and call for the US to cut and run:
Walter Cronkite, CBS-TV news anchor known as "the most trusted man in America," after a combat tour of Vietnam in 1968 declared, "There is no way this war can be justified any longer."
Johnson lamented to aides, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." He announced he would not run for re-election.
The crucial difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that there is no Cronkite to call Bush's bluff. Without a strong, trusted, non-political voice, too many of us remain Bush-blinded.
No, the crucial difference is that we no longer live in era of mass media dominated by three television channels. Because the big three controlled the flow of information the public received, they enjoyed a virtual lock on shaping public opinion.
The original three networks, plus the similarly biased CNN now compete with Fox, talk radio, and the Blogosphere for public opinion, each of whom have done yeoman work reminding the public that unlike the Al Neuharths of the world, that this is 1968, and Iraq isn't Vietnam.
Which makes it virtually impossible for one man to rise to the top of the opinion heap, unlike 1968 when Cronkite was at the peak of his powers as an opinion shaper--there's just so many more choices, for people on both sides of the aisle now that, to borrow Alvin Toffler's word, the media has been "de-massified".
Of course, for Neuharth to say that Cronkite is non-political is naiveté of the worst order. Cronkite has written that "I believe that most of us reporters are liberal", adding:
Incidentally, I looked up the definition of "liberal" in a Random House dictionary. It gave the synonyms for "liberal" as "progressive," "broad-minded," "unprejudiced," "beneficent."
No, no bias there. And that would be consistent with his worldview, one that compares the US military to Nazis; and believes that Karl Rove is keeping Osama Bin Laden in cold storage with Jim Morrison, Amelia Earhart and Austin Powers, in the basement of the Ministry of Defense.
Then there's the second half of Neuharth's op-ed: nostalgia for the press's onetime ability to be seemingly more powerful than the president of the United States. Unlike Johnson, who believed that his destiny lied in Uncle Walter's hands, President Bush and his advisors share a much more, shall we say, nuanced view of the legacy media:
[Ken Auletta of the New Yorker], for example, can describe Bush at a barbeque for the press in August, where a reporter says to the president: is it really true you don't read us, don't even watch the news? Bush confirms it.
And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.
Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush's people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone:
That's his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don't accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of "Gotcha." Oh, you're interested in headlines, and you're interested in conflict. You're not interested in having a serious discussion... and exploring things.
Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta's reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren't a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role-- official or otherwise.
Not any more, when after Watergate, their mission, virtually en masse, changed from reporting the news, to wanting to create the news--largely by attacking the party that few reporters will admit to belonging to.
Which brings us to this post by Ed Morrissey, in which he comments on an op-ed in the Minneapolis "Strib":
The Minneapolis Star Tribune runs an opinion piece by Mark Fitzgerald today bemoaning the loss of confidence for the media in today's market. He notes the recent Pew polling that shows that less than half of Americans believe that the press protects American democracy. Fitzgerald also laments the case of Diana Griego Erwin, the latest example of Exempt Media columnists that simply made up sources to create stories which matched her preconceived notions of how the world should work -- in this case, dozens of times -- with all those editorial layers about which we hear endlessly allowing it to continue for years.
Fitzgerald wonders how the press can recover from these debacles to once again capture the confidence of the American public. His answer -- to bash Bush even more.
But of course--that's the ticket!
Later, Morrissey writes:
Mostly, however, the appearance of this column in the Strib makes for amusing reading. No major daily in the US has a better track record of hysterical anti-Bush rhetoric from its editorial board than the Twin Cities' primary daily. Whether it reverses itself on issues like filibusters, or gives its blessing to Gitmo-Nazi analogies, the Strib has served at the vanguard of Bush hatred. As a result, not only have people lost confidence in the newspaper, they're cancelling it in droves. In the past month, the Strib has started to deliver papers to homes that don't subscribe in an attempt to bolster its readership numbers for advertisers. I used to see a freebie once every couple of months, usually a Sunday paper, which served as a reminder of the value of home delivery. In the last month, I have received delivery at least three times a week; last week, it was almost every day.
Do you sense desperation? I certainly do.
Fitzgerald may simply be arguing for the hair of the dog that bit the press in order to alleviate its hangover, but it's bad advice. If the media wants to win our confidence, it needs to stop advocating for its own politics and start reporting the truth. Quit using single anonymous sourcing to spread rumors and gossip, do complete research, and treat all sides fairly. That will go a long way to creating the trust that the press has abused in the 30 years since Watergate.
It won't happen. Look at Neuharth's column: here's a guy who founded the first national newspaper (and yes, I know that USA Today is "McNews" and somewhat fluffy, but they do have a tremendous platform to work from, if they wanted to take it seriously), but can't see the forest for the trees: the flow of information has changed radically since the days of Uncle Walter and All The President's Men: it flows two ways now, and from more sources than ever before.
And too much of the public knows how the gears operate, to take a Cronkite-style figure at his word that he's "a strong, trusted, non-political voice".
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