Cheney's Shadow
David Greenberg eloquently defends Bart's approach to Cheney and I think we see eye-to-eye. The sheer accumulation of detail and fact makes for an overwhelming portrait of executive manipulation redolent of the Nixon White House. But--you knew that "but" was coming--Paul might seem to have something when he pleads for more context. But I don't think Paul would be happy with the result. Had Bart delved more fully into the relationship between Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney, for example, I suspect he would have unearthed even more unflattering information.
Where David's defense might run aground, I think, is that it skirts the shoals of self-complacency. There's a fine line between adversarial journalism and a journalistic lynching. Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker had what we would today call "agendas"--Steffens to expose the iniquity of Wall Street potentates, Baker to burnish Woodrow Wilson's reputation. Bart, by contrast, does not seem to have an axe to grind, at least not one that I could detect.
My problem with conservatives, by contrast, is that they invoke the term "bias" to dismiss the kind of objective reporting David is praising. Just because they don't like a piece of news doesn't mean that it is automatically "biased." That amounts to special pleading in my opinion.
In any case, in discussing Angler, it had not occurred to me that we would be discussing these angles. As the good ship Obama comes to port in Washington, DC, perhaps the storm clouds that have beset journalism in recent years will lift as well.
Walter Pincus, writing recently about Steffens in "A Call for Journalistic Courage":
I'd rather have Nattering Nabobs being Negative than reporters without the spine to tell the real story...
November 21, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I watched Bill Moyers, Bill Mahr, Phil Donahue, Dan Rather and others lose their jobs and the Dixie Chicks lose their American gigs for speaking against the Bush Administration and I watched Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman take on the mantle of some ephemeral Fairness Doctrine at the same time. The show "24" was under orders from the White House-Cheney-to make terrorists in one of their plots Muslim. I saw cable news melt down into a pile of nothingness until it reached a point where Olbermann was the only open critic left. The New York Times for Christ's sake, had reporters like Judith Miller shilling for the White House so the White House could quote the NYT on cable news to buttress its position. I have read the individual arguments against pinning media firings on the White House, but this chain of events, along with others, demonstrated a real pattern to me. And watching Cheney, Rice, Bush, Rummy and others lie day after day for eight years really solidified that pettern.Do you remember when it was being floated in the media that we really don't have to necessarily vote on the first Tuesday in November if a crisis developed and there was no outcry whatsoever? If this is Bush Bashing, good for me. I am happy being a nattering nabob.
November 23, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink