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Discussion Membership
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Removing the 'Post' from Post-PressIn the comments section of In the Press Room of the White House that is Post Press you will find: Rosen: Finally, the press has done many things that have contributed to its current problems, including its problems with Bush and the Right wing and the great American public. In this post I am not concentrating on those things. Waters: For our edification, would you give us pointers to some links where, in the past, you have concentrated on those things? Sometimes we forget.In his response, Jay Rosen reviewed a little more than a year of his previous PressThink essays and kindly responded with ten links. Of the ten, four really addressed administration press coverage and of those, two deserved special mention for being constructively instructive to the administration press about its coverage. Here's his list, ordered by topic and date:
About administration press coverage (positive or negative):
Not sure what it is about:
Not about administration press coverage: Surprising Ommissions from the PressThink listThe list overlooks pivotal administration coverage of Bush's April 13, 2004, press conference. The two PressThink essays that bracketed the press conference were not on the original list. They were:4/13/2004--A Prime Time News Conference Before a Special Interest: Make Sense to You? And the "teachable moment" of: 4/25/2004--Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That." The PressThink essay before the press conference said: [sbw: parsing legitimacy of the White House Press and the Bush legitimacy of it] It would seem to be an odd practice, but unless the New Yorker's Ken Auletta is making things up, that's what the White House decided yesterday: appear on prime time before a self-serving bunch who don't represent anyone, and indeed have been losing authority.and But suppose the campaign to discredit and marginalize journalists--as a special interest no different from the trucking association or teacher's unions--had actually succeeded? ... Then there would be no leadership forum available tonight. The option of re-gaining momentum that way would be lost. I doubt the lesson will be learned among the Bush team, but it will be there to absorb for anyone with eyes and ears.And in comments: Are you responding to critics? For that you have to have critics worth responding to. Are you playing the reporters for fools? If it's that, then they better be fools for your strategy to work. Even then, how does handling the questions of fools help you explain your Iraq policy any better, or re-assure voters of your strong sense of command? Isn't a burlesque more likely? Is that what Bush needs at this hour?and further down: AST: It's the White House, according to Ken Auletta, that calls the press a special interest. I was reporting and commenting on that fact, and I tried to ask if the claim--just another special interest--still made sense, given how the same White House decided that meeting the press and its questions during a time a growing public doubt was the wise thing for Bush to do. Thus, the first line: "President Bush will be on national television tonight, taking questions from a special interest group." Then, following the press conference, consider both the tone and the direction of: Bush to Press: "You're Assuming That You Represent the Public. I Don't Accept That." As a first step out of this trap, journalists need to ask themselves: how did we become so predictable? Is it possisble to go back, and pull the wire that made this so? The game of Gotcha does exist. Auletta, a liberal journalist, can recognize it as easily as Karl Rove. [sbw: Then Jay gives reporters advice about covering Bush.] Knock him off stride. Get him off the talking points. Improving administration press coveragePressThink did instruct administration press coverage, but the lesson was aimed at sharpening the presscorps approach -- not at all the point of The Press is a Player or the Gopnik essay. Gopnik recalled the failures ten years earlier of press coverage of Bill Clinton's administration."Any ordinary television viewer who has watched Presidential news conferences over the last couple of Administrations can't have failed to pick up a tone of high-minded moral indignation in the reporters' questions, which seem designed not so much to get at a particular fact or elicit a particular view as to dramatize the gulf in moral stature between the reporters and the President." ("Read All About It," the New Yorker, Dec. 12, 1994, not online.)Go back ten years earlier to the press coverage of Ronald Reagan, whose immunity to the periorations of the press corps earned him the reputation of the teflon President. So, for an entire generation, administrations of both parties have been obliged to deal with a press corps that has had no check, no balance, no tutor, and no one from inside or outside the press to hold a mirror up to it. Of course, that was before weblogs. The Bush press conference of April 13, 2004, was pivotal, because, in retrospect, news was happening unreported all around the press corps while they were fixated on the "Gotcha" of getting Bush to admit to having made a mistake -- something Bush was not about to do, having 20 years of experience watching Reagan and Clinton deal with the White House press. The evidence of the transcript shows "gotcha" journalism in full swing, juxtaposed with the first, seeming off-the-cuff, expression of Bush's philosophical advocacy of freedom that, although unreported, became the cornerstone of his campaign, his inaugural address, his State of the Union address, the successful Iraqi election, and the current ripples of progress throughout the Middle East. PressThink may have seen the issue differently, but I wrote about it April 14, 2004, in "The lens of the media", April 28, 2004, "Refocusing the media lens", and April 29, 2004, "Rosen's Bush Theory Redux" which included Jay's comment from his 4/25/2004 column, "Gotcha is a pattern in the relationship, a "game" with many players. "Stiffed ya" is a game too, played from the podium at the press." I used the links Jay provided, so I trust I haven't misinterpreted his position. He can provide pointers to other links that might be useful. In conclusionI'm sure that Jay and I agree that journalism is a necessary lynch pin of civilization. Jay seems to respect journalism so much that he seems to report on journalism more as he wishes it to be -- without the tough love of hard, constructive criticism.A sturdy scrutiny of the administration press corps is in order. PressThink is absolutely the right place to consider how to encourage excellence in their journalism that will make "Stiff-ya" not only unnecessary, but show it to be the bad form we all know it to be. --30-- - - - - - - - - - - Jay's list, with relevant excerpts from the links: Opinion Bad, Reporting Good and Nothing Else Do You Need to Know It's more useful, and more true-to-life than reporting as the holy good and punditry as the life-sapping bad. Ready? Here it is: people who know what they're talking about (good) vs. people who don't (bad). Can there be fact-based commentary, Mister Ombudsman? Sure, and it's the only kind that's worth having because it comes from people who know what they are talking about. We Just Don't Think About It: The Strange Press Mind of Leonard Downie Exit, Voice and Loyalty at the Los Angeles Times Psst.... The Press is a Player The press has power. It is an actor, of sorts. But it is also a herd of independent minds, and in this sense it is organized not to think.and [sbw: Then follows an apologia] The press has power. It is an actor, of sorts. But it is also a herd of independent minds, and in this sense it is organized not to think. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/02/23/gopnik_time.html Of Course Ted Koppel Was Making a Political Statement. So What? "What I think he meant by it was: "I am using this program, ABC's Nightline, in opposition to the way daily politics and daily journalism dull us to what's happening on a human level. I am also using this program, Nightline, in opposition to the way wartime pressures close down debate, and constrict the space of honest reflection. My purpose is not to inform or persuade, it is to invite reflection, a pause to re-think the meaning of 721 dead in Iraq. ..." The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow. Stark Message for the Legacy Media They find a campaign with 50 days left overtaken by Vietnam, by character issues, by attacks, and by fights over the legitimacy of various actors (including the Gang itself, including Dan Rather)-- rather than all the problems Americans face looking forward. "Who knows what lurks in the heart and mind of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry?" [Jill Zuckerman, Chicago Tribune] wrote. "Not the traveling press corps, that's for sure." They can't get the candidate to take questions. When President Bush came to speak to the minority journalists' conference in Washington last month, the big news was about the greater applause for Kerry--a standing ovation at the end--and whether this showed undue bias in the press. [See: http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/08/08/unity_dc.html] Rather's Satisfaction: Mystifying Troubles at CBS - - - - - - - - - - [sbw Note: I have great sympathy for correspondents in the backwater of the White House beat. It may be a glamour position journalists aspire to, but it is not the pinnacle of reporting opportunities. Maybe we don't get the best reporters there because the good ones avoid it.] [Macro error: Can't find a sub-table named "commentIt".]
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