Big Think

"He Said, She Said" Journalism: Are We Done With That Yet?

There I am, sitting at the breakfast table, with my coffee and a copy of the New York Times, in the classic newspaper reading position from before the Web. And I come to this article, headlined "Ex-Chairman of A.I.G. Says Bailout Has Failed." I immediately recognize in it the signs of a he said, she said account. Quick definition: "He said, she said" journalism means... * There's a public dispute. * The dispute makes news. * No real attempt is made to assess clashing truth claims in the story, even though they are in some sense the reason for the story. (Under the "conflict makes news" test.) * The means for assessment do exist, so it's possible to exert a factual check on some of the claims, but for whatever reason the report declines to make use of them. * The symmetry of two sides making opposite claims puts the reporter in the middle between polarized extremes. When these five conditions are met, the genre is in gear. The he said part might sound like this: Mr. Greenberg asserted that he would have reduced or at least hedged A.I.G.'s exposure to credit-default swaps in 2005, when A.I.G.'s credit rating was reduced. "A.I.G.'s business model did not fail; its management did," he asserted. Followed by the "she" said... That provoked another scornful counterattack from his former company, saying that Mr. Greenberg's assertions were "implausible," "not grounded in reality" and at odds with his track record of not hedging A.I.G.'s bets on credit-default swaps. I had read enough of the Times coverage of Mr. Greenberg to wonder why the editors would run something so lame. Their business columnists have been (excuse the expression) kicking ass on meltdown coverage, including A.I.G. But here there was no attempt to assess clashing truth claims, even though Times journalism was available to do just that. Instead Hank Greenberg got to star in a game of "you say black, I say white." It seemed strange to me that in 2009 stories like that were still being waved on through. On Twitter I sometimes talk to Ryan Chittum, who writes The Audit column for Columbia Journalism Review. It's a running critique of the business press after the banking meltdown. So I asked Ryan, "is this the best the Times can do?" because he knows a lot more about the coverage than I do. A few hours later he answered me at CJR. This one's easy: No. The Times's story offers no analysis and forces readers--95 percent of whom know little or nothing about Greenberg's tenure at AIG--to try to guess who's right. Which is why these stories are so frustrating: we're left helpless by them. I want to quote the rest of his judgment because it helps nail down what is meant by he said, she said, not just at the New York Times, which has no special purchase on the form, but anywhere. The means are available to do better, but these are not employed. Chittum: There's no attempt to try to separate out who's right here, even though everybody but Hank Greenberg knows he has major responsibility for driving AIG into the ground. Here's some stuff that helps explain why. I just culled it from the excellent Washington Post three-parter on AIG in December (if you haven't read that yet, make sure you do): He created the Financial Products division in 1987 with traders from soon-to-be disgraced Drexel Burnham Lambert, approved its entry into the credit-default swap market in 1998, empowered Joseph Cassano, oversaw FP when it set up "sham" companies that resulted in tens of millions in fines, was an unindicted co-conspirator in a huge fraud at AIG, oversaw the company's credit downgrade from AAA, was in charge when half of the company's $80 billion in CDS on subprime CDOs were written. Apparently, Cassano and FP stopped issuing CDS within months of Greenberg's exit in 2005. How much more evidence do you need to tell your readers that this guy has significant responsibility for the disaster that came to his his company and the entire economy--to not let him spin away? "How much more evidence do you need?" is the kind of exasperation a lot of us have felt with what he calls "false balance," which is another name for the pattern I'm describing. So far so good. I told you what he said, she said is, and gave you an example. CJR chimed in, and told the New York Times it could do way better, showing how. Press criticism lives! (Twitter helps.) But this does not tell us why he said, she said reporting still exists, or ever existed. To understand that we have to cut deeper into news practice, American style. Turn the question around for a moment: what are the advantages of the newswriting formula I have derisively labeled "he said, she said?" Rather than treat it as a problem, approach it as a kind of solution to quandaries common on the reporting trail. When, for example, a screaming fight breaks out at the city council meeting and you don't know who's right, but you have to report it, he said, she said makes the story instantly writable. Not a problem, but a solution to the reporter's (deadline!) problem. When you kinda sorta recall that Hank Greenberg is a guy who shouldn't necessarily get the benefit of the doubt in a dispute like this, but you don't know the history well enough to import it into your account without a high risk of error, and yet you have to produce an error-free account for tomorrow's paper because your editor expects of you just that... he said, she said gets you there. Or when the Congressional Budget Office issues a report on ethanol and what it's costing us in higher food prices, the AP reporter to whom the story is given could just summarize the report, but that's a little too much like stenography, isn't it? So the AP adds reactions from organized groups that are primed to react. This is a low cost way of going beyond the report itself. A familiar battle of interpretations follows, with critics of ethanol underlining the costs and supporters stressing the benefits. Of course, the AP could try to sort out those competing claims, but that would take more time and background knowledge than it probably has available for a simple "CBO report issued" story. "Supporters of ethanol disagreed, saying the report was good news..." gets the job done. These are some of the strengths of the he said, she said genre, a newsroom workhorse for forty years. (Think it's easy? You try making any dispute story in the world writable on deadline...) The best description I've read of the problem to which devices like he said, she said are a solution comes from former Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor, who covered national politics. Here's a comment about it that I left at the New York Times Opinionator blog. It was an attempt to explain a phrase I use to describe the kind of distortion that he said, she said can produce: "regression toward a phony mean." Journalists associate the middle with truth, when there may be no reason to. In his 1990 book, See How They Run, former Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor (once seen as heir to David Broder) explained why regression toward a phony mean is so common in journalism. It answers to a need for what he calls "refuge." Here is what he said: "Sometimes I worry that my squeamishness about making sharp judgments, pro or con, makes me unfit for the slam-bang world of daily journalism. Other times I conclude that it makes me ideally suited for newspapering- certainly for the rigors and conventions of modern 'objective' journalism. For I can dispose of my dilemmas by writing stories straight down the middle. I can search for the halfway point between the best and the worst that might be said about someone (or some policy or idea) and write my story in that fair-minded place. By aiming for the golden mean, I probably land near the best approximation of truth more often than if I were guided by any other set of compasses- partisan, ideological, pyschological, whatever... Yes, I am seeking truth. But I'm also seeking refuge. I'm taking a pass on the toughest calls I face." Clearly, there can be something extreme about this squeamishness, too. Clearly, the desire for refuge can get out hand. Writing the news so that it lands somewhere near the "halfway point between the best and the worst that might be said about someone" is not a truthtelling impulse at all, but a refuge-seeking one, and it's possible that this ritual will distort a given story. Like the "straight down the middle" impulse that Taylor writes about, he said, she said is not so much a truth-telling strategy as refuge-seeking behavior that fits well into newsroom production demands. "Taking a pass" on the tougher calls (like who's blowing more smoke) is economical. It's seen as risk-reduction, as well, because the account declines to explicitly endorse or actively mistrust any claim that is made in the account. Isn't it safer to report, "Rumsfeld said...," letting Democrats in Congress howl at him (and report that) than it would be to report, "Rumsfeld said, erroneously..." and try to debunk the claim yourself? The first strategy doesn't put your own authority at risk, the second does, but for a reason. We need journalists who understand that reason. And I think many do. But a lot don't. He said, she said reporting appears to be risk-reducing, but this is exactly what's changing on the press. For a given report about, say, former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke, "the halfway point between the best and the worst that might be said about someone" is no more likely to be accurate than the one-fifth mark, especially when you factor in the reality of the Overton Window and the general pattern we know as "working the refs." The halfway point is a miserable guideline but it can sound pretty good when you are trying to advertise to all that you have no skin in the game. This is how I think of he said, she said reporting. Besides being easy to operate, and requiring the fewest imports of knowledge, it's a way of reporting the news that advertises the producer's even handedness. The ad counts as much as the info. We report, you decide. "Ex-Chairman of A.I.G. Says Bailout Has Failed" was a text most likely intended for the print edition of the New York Times business pages. The newswriting formula that produced it dates from before the Web made all news and reference pages equidistant from the user. He said, she said might have been seen as good enough when it was difficult for others to check what had previously been reported about the ex-chairman of A.I.G., but that is simply not the case for a New York Times reporter in April, 2009. There has been a loss of refuge. And this is why he said, she said journalism is in decline, even though you still see plenty of it around. Today, any well informed blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can easily find the materials to point out an instance of false balance or the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Professional opinion has therefore shifted and among the better journalists, some of whom I know, it is no longer acceptable to defend he said, she said treatments when the materials are available to call out distortions and untruths. (That doesn't mean the practice has halted; I'm talking about a shifts in the terms of legitimacy among journalists, and about efforts like this.) In fact, it's taken a long time to get to this point. Back in 2004 setting a higher standard than he said, she said was still a novel idea. Chris Mooney wrote about it in the context of science coverage under Bush. ("How 'Balanced' Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality.") As CJR's Campaign Desk noted... The candidate makes a statement. You write it down, then you call the other side for a response. It's one of journalism's fundamentals. Tell us what he said, tell us what she said, and you're covered, right? Well, no. Given the amount of spin this election year, the old rules don't apply any more. Campaign Desk herewith proposes a new ground rule: "He said/she said/we said." ... With a variety of Internet research tools readily at hand, it has never been easier for reporters to draw an independent assessment on any given day of who is right, who is wrong, and in what way. The tools are there to make an independent assessment of who is right: for journalists, that is the critical point. (See also my post from 2004, He Said, She Said, We Said and Rethinking Objectivity by Brent Cunningham from 2003.) Because of that--and because of working the refs, the Overton Window, the failures of the political press under Bush--he said, she said no longer has the acceptance rates it once did. Which is why it was so easy to get Ryan Chittum to answer my question, "is this the best the Times can do?" It wasn't. And it's easier than ever to show that. More people are involved in showing it, too. This raises the question of whether a he said, she said treatment loses you more in user disgust with your lameness than any informational gain in having fresh news to report about Hank Greenberg trading barbs with A.I.G. Do people want to feel helpless in sorting out who's bullshitting them more? Is that the news media's role, to increase that feeling? Is such a practice even sustainable in the Web era? That it may not be (and the industry knows it) is shown by what The Politico called a "high-stakes experiment" at the AP's Washington bureau. The plan was to move "from its signature neutral and detached tone" to a more aggressive style of newswriting that bureau chief Ron Fournier calls "cutting through the clutter." In the stories the new boss is encouraging, first-person writing and emotive language are okay. So is scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians' statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers. In other words, we can't skate by on he said, she said any more. Call it like they see it is, in fact, a successor principle but this means that AP reporters are now involved in acts of political judgment that can easily go awry, and their own politics can be at issue. Time to wrap this up. Part of the problem is that American journalism as an occupational scene has never gone for the candor Paul Taylor showed in his comments on searching for the halfway point between the best and the worst that might be said. The pro system talks about the reporting of news as a truth-telling enterprise, but not a difference-splitting or dilemma-disposing one. It says: we're the source of "the most authoritative news coverage," as the AP recently put it. But it rarely mentions the refuge-seeking part, which subtly undermines that authority. As I tried to explain in Why Campaign Coverage Sucks (published at TomDispatch.com and Salon, January 2008) there is an "innocence agenda" at work in the mainstream press. It favors certain practices: Who's-gonna-win is portable, reusable from cycle to cycle, and easily learned by newcomers to the press pack. Journalists believe it brings readers to the page and eyeballs to the screen. It [plays] well on television, because it generates an endless series of puzzles toward which journalists can gesture as they display their savviness, which is the unofficial religion of the mainstream press. But the biggest advantage of horse-race journalism is that it permits reporters and pundits to play up their detachment. Focusing on the race advertises the political innocence of the press because "who's gonna win?" is not an ideological question. By asking it you reaffirm that yours is not an ideological profession. In its heyday he said, she said was like a stamping plant in the factory of news. It recognized that production demands trumped truthtelling requirements. But these were the production demands of a beast that is now changing. Refusing to serve as a check on Hank Greenberg's power to distort the news when the means for a such a check are available-- this too can have a cost, just as importing the knowledge to do the check has a cost. At a certain point in this dynamic, he said, she said journalism loses its utility and becomes one of the things dragging the news business down. But as the industry sheds people and newsrooms thin out, there could be greater reliance on a more and more bankrupt and trust-rotting practice. That's a downward spiral. Criticism of he said, she said practices and the flippancy that comes with it should therefore continue. The other day, Paul Kane of the Washington Post said it was too much to expect him to import into his account the background knowledge that a Republican Senator warning about the dangers to Senate comity of proceeding with only 50 votes had voted to do the same thing when her party held the majority but not 60 votes. (Matthew Yglesias picked up on it.) Kane said he was astonished by this demand; he couldn't figure out where it was coming from. "We reported what Olympia Snowe said. That's what she said. That's what Republicans are saying. I really don't know what you want of us." If he's not just blowing smoke, and he really doesn't know-- that is a problem for the Washington Post.

April 16, 2009, 10:22 AM

Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Net Erodes the Authority of the Press

It's easily the most useful diagram I've found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice. You can draw it by hand right now. Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole "sphere of consensus." Call the middle region "sphere of legitimate debate," and the outer region "sphere of deviance." That's the entire model. Now you have a way to understand why it's so unproductive to argue with journalists about the deep politics of their work. They don't know about this freakin' diagram! Here it is in its original form, from the 1986 book The Uncensored War by press scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Hallin felt he needed something more supple--and truthful--than calcified notions like objectivity and "opinions are confined to the editorial page." So he came up with this diagram. Let's look more carefully at his three regions. 1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn't, but they think so.) Hallin: "This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process." Here the two-party system reigns, and the news agenda is what the people in power are likely to have on their agenda. Perhaps the purest expression of this sphere is Washington Week on PBS, where journalists discuss what the two-party system defines as "the issues." Objectivity and balance are "the supreme journalistic virtues" for the panelists on Washington Week because when there is legitimate debate it's hard to know where the truth lies. There are risks in saying that truth lies with one faction in the debate, as against another-- even when it does. He said, she said journalism is like the bad seed of this sphere, but also a logical outcome of it. 2. ) The sphere of consensus is the "motherhood and apple pie" of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they're almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, "journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers." (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.) Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like "Lincoln was a great president," and "it doesn't matter where you come from, you can succeed in America." Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed. 3.) In the sphere of deviance we find "political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard." As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn't the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press "plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda" the deviant view, says Hallin. It "marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct." Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance--as defined by journalists--will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition. If you don't think separation of church and state is such a good idea; if you do think a single payer system is the way to go; if you dissent from the "lockstep behavior of both major American political parties when it comes to Israel" (Glenn Greenwald) chances are you will never find your views reflected in the news. It's not that there's a one-sided debate; there's no debate. Complications to keep in mind. The three spheres are not really separate; they create one another, like the public and private do. The boundaries between regions are semi-porous and impermanent. Things can move out of one sphere and into another--that's what political and cultural change is, if you think about it--but when they do shift there is often no announcement. One day David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network shows up on Meet the Press, but Amy Goodman of Democracy Now never does. This can be confusing. Of course, the producers of Meet the Press could say in a press release, "We decided that Pat Robertson's CBN is now within the sphere of legitimate debate because..." but then they would have to complete the "because" in a plausible way and very often they cannot. ("Amy Goodman, we decided, does not qualify for this show because...") This gap between what journalists actually do as they arrange the scene of politics, and the portion they can explain or defend publicly--the difference between making news and making sense--is responsible for a lot of the anger and bad feeling projected at the political press by various constituencies that notice these moves and question them. Within the sphere of legitimate debate there is some variance. Journalists behave differently if the issue is closer to the doughnut hole than they do when it is nearer the edge. The closer they think they are to the unquestioned core of consensus, the more plausible it is to present a single view as the only view, which is a variant on the old saw about American foreign policy: "Politics stops at the water's edge." Another complication: Journalists aren't the only actors. Elections have a great deal to do with what gets entered into legitimate debate. Candidates--especially candidates for president--can legitimize an issue just by talking about it. Political parties can expand their agenda, and journalists will cover that. Powerful and visible people can start questioning a consensus belief and remove it from the "everyone agrees" category. And of course public opinion and social behavior do change over time. Some implications of Hallin's model. That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another-- none of this is in their official job description. You won't find it taught in J-school, either. It's an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their "sphere placement" decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It's like trying to complain to your kid's teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values. When (with some exceptions) political journalists failed properly to examine George W. Bush's case for war in Iraq, they were making a category mistake. They treated Bush's plan as part of the sphere of consensus. But even when Congress supports it, a case for war can never be removed from legitimate debate. That's just a bad idea. Mentally placing the war's opponents in the sphere of deviance was another category error. In politics, when people screw up like that, we can replace them: throw the bums out! we say. But the First Amendment says we cannot do that to people in the press. The bums stay. And later they are free to say: we didn't screw up at all, as David Gregory, now host of Meet the Press, did say to his enduring shame. "We are not allowing ourselves to think politically." Deciding what does and does not legitimately belong within the national debate is--no way around it--a political act. And yet a pervasive belief within the press is that journalists do not engage in such action, for to do so would violate their principles. As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, "We think it's important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically." I think he's right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good. When it is criticized for this it will reject the criticism out of hand, which is also not good. Atrios, the economist and liberal blogger with a big following, has a more colorful phrase for "maintaining boundaries around the sphere of legitimate debate." He often writes about the "dirty f*cking hippies," by which he means the out-of-power or online left, and the way this group is marginalized by Washington journalists, who sometimes seem to define themselves against it. "In the late 90s, the dirty f*cking hippies were the crazy people who thought that Bill Clinton should neither resign nor be impeached," he writes. "In the great wasteland of our mainstream media there was almost no place one could turn to find someone expressing the majority view of the American public, that this whole thing was insane." Sometimes the people the press thinks of as deviant types are closer to the sphere of consensus than the journalists who are classifying those same people as "fringe." How can that happen? Well, one of the known problems with our political press is that its reference group for establishing the "ground" of consensus is the insiders: the professional political class in Washington. It then offers that consensus to the country as if it were the country's own, when it's not, necessarily. Savvy analysis of the inside game simulates a more genuine political dialogue. All this erodes confidence in a way that may be invisible to journalists behaving as insiders themselves. And it gives the opening to Jon Stewart and his kind to exploit that gap I talked about between making news and making sense. "Echo chamber" or counter-sphere? Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized-- meaning they were connected "up" to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the "sphere of legitimate debate" as defined by journalists doesn't match up with their own definition. In the past there was nowhere for this kind of sentiment to go. Now it collects, solidifies and expresses itself online. Bloggers tap into it to gain a following and serve demand. Journalists call this the "echo chamber," which is their way of downgrading it as a reliable source. But what's really happening is that the authority of the press to assume consensus, define deviance and set the terms for legitimate debate is weaker when people can connect horizontally around and about the news. Which is how I got to my three word formlua for understanding the Internet's effects in politics and media: "audience atomization overcome."

January 14, 2009, 10:13 AM

The Culture War Option For The Palin Convention

John McCain's convention gambit is now a culture war strategy. It depends for its execution on conflict with journalists, and with bloggers (the "angry left," Bush called them last night) along with confusion between and among the press, the blogosphere, and the Democratic party. It revives cultural memory: the resentment narrative after Chicago '68 but with the angry left more distributed. It dispenses with issues and seeks a trial of personalities. It bets big time on backlash. At the center of the strategy is the flashpoint candidacy of Sarah Palin, a charismatic figure around whom the war can be brought to scale, as it were. In fact the Politico is reporting just that: Palin reignites culture wars. I have no idea if the ignition system will work; nor do I claim that "this is what they were thinking" when they made the decision to nominate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Other interpretations may turn out to be truer than mine. This post is my look at the bets McCain and company seem to be placing. I am not recommending the strategy. I am not predicting it will succeed. I think it was improvised, like my description here.... The storm around Sarah Pailn overtakes the story of the Republican convention and merges with it, like a smaller but stronger company taking over a larger but troubled enterprise. Behind the storm a "wave narrative" builds as her appointment generates headlines on multiple fronts. The irresistible force of fact-fed controversy meets the immovable enthusiasm for Palin as cultural object: charismatic everywoman straight from the imaginary of conservative America. * The basic strategy is: don't fight the "crisis" narrative. Rather, do things that bring it on; and in that crisis re-divide the electorate hoping to grab the bigger half. The evangelical wing, and other social conservatives are strongly moved by her candidacy. More and more of their commitment to McCain is vested in him through her. As Andrew Sullivan writes: "The emotions involved -- especially among the Christianist base who have immediately bonded on purely religious and cultural terms with Palin -- are epic." * The strategy: sell the epic version of her candidacy. Allow her to become bigger than McCain in narrative terms. And let the two mavericks together overawe the Republican party, a damaged brand. Continued bad news on the investigation front adds further drama, new fact streams and more protagonists to the Sarah Palin story. As more comes out about the decision to name Sarah Palin to the ticket, it's harder to see how anyone on the inside thought it McCain's best choice for president-in-waiting. * Strategy: Give no ground, pile on the praise for her performance in Alaska, pump up her governor's experience to death-defying extremes, hope for theatrical confrontation with characters in the mainstream media who can star as the cosmopolitan elites in the sudden politics of resentment the convention has been driven to. Bloggers and open platforms continue to publish riskier--and risque--material, some of it unfit for family consumption, some of it false, salacious and reckless, some of it true, relevant and damaging, a portion of which is picked up by the traditional press. * Strategy: confound and collapse all distinctions between closed editorial systems (like the newsroom of the New York Times), open systems (like the blogging community DailyKos.com) and political systems, like the Democratic party and its activist wing. Whenever possible mix these up. Conflate constantly. Attack them all. Jump from one to the other without warning or thread. Sow confusion among streams and let that confusion mix with the resentment in a culture war atmosphere. As more emerges about how the McCain camp made the decision, the appointment looks more and reckless, the decision rushed, the vetting inadequate. This leads to advanced jeering from the left, intense criticism in the press, damaging leaks from within the Republican party, fueling calls from within and without for Sarah Palin to remove herself. * Strategy: stick with "she was fully vetted" no matter what comes out. People who don't believe it are trying to bring down Palin's historic candidacy; or they don't accept that a conservative woman can be the one to break the glass ceiling. If some establishment Republicans are skeptical or trying to stop her, that's good for the crisis narrative, and good for two maverick candidates. Sarah Palin under intense pressure then gives a charismatic performance on Wednesday of convention week and wows much of America, outdrawing Obama in the ratings and sending a flood of cash to McCain and the GOP. * Strategy: bingo, that's your big break. A wave effect is unleashed by a stunning televised performance. It is shock and awe in the theater of the post-modern presidency. Journalists watching all this keep saying to themselves: wait until she gets out on the campaign trail. Wait until she sits for those interviews with experienced reporters and faces a real press conference. * Strategy: double down on defiance by never letting her answer questions, except from friendly media figures who have joined your narrative; like Cheney with Fox. No meet the press at all. No interviews of Palin with the DC media elite-- at all. De-legitimate the ask. Break with all "access" expectations. Use surrogates and spokesman, let them get mauled, then whip up resentment at their mistreatment. Answer questions at town halls and call that adequate enough. Meanwhile, the investigation of her performance in Alaska puts more and more pressure on the Palin appointment as things come out that would ordinarily disqualify a candidate from consideration or cast doubt on her truthfulness in a grave way. * Strategy: Comes from Bush, the younger. When realities uncovered are directly in conflict with prior claims, consider the option of keeping the claims and breaking with reality. Done the right way, it's a demonstration of strength. It dismays and weakens the press. And it can be great theatre.

September 3, 2008, 9:46 AM

Hype Busters at Mother Jones Bring the Noise

Is the concept really so hard for the editors of Mother Jones to grasp? Hype-busting and the exercise of hype are very closely related things; one may easily turn into the other if you're not careful, in the same way that playing the race card and accusations of playing the race card bring on the same dynamic. Mother Jones is currently running a feature called The Audacity of Hype? It offer us the views of 24 writers, thinkers and historians on a question the editors find important: Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in US history? There's no quote from Obama comparing his campaign to the great progressive moments in American history. There's no link to a text where he says that. This seemed odd for 2008; by now, the ethic of the link is reasonably well known among those who publish online. I asked the people in my Twitter feed, "If you're editing this for Mother Jones, do you run the feature without a quote or link where Obama offers the comparison?" Russ Walker, formerly an editor at washingtonpost.com, said, "Absolutely not." In the email I got from David Corn as he pushed out to his list a promo for the Mother Jones feature, it says, "Prominent thinkers and writers ponder Obama and his claim that his campaign is comparable to the great progressive movements in U.S. history." Obama really said something like that? He said his campaign is a "movement" comparable to, say, the civil rights movement, or to second wave feminism, or to the labor movement after the industrial revolution? If so, I had missed it. So had Dan Kennedy. ("Let's have the precise language.") Now I've heard Obama say, "this is our moment, this is our time." So have you. But that's different from a truth claim like, "my campaign is a movement comparable to the great progressive movements in history." My doubts were increased by the phrase: The Audacity of Hype. This doubles the editors' bet. They're not only suggesting he made the claim, they're saying it's been repeated often enough to be an audacious form of self-promotion. They're provoking Pat Buchanan and giving him a forum to say things like... It is absurd to argue that the nomination or an election of Barack Obama would be as important a historical event as the liberation of 3 million slaves after the bloodiest war in American history, that took 600,000 lives and set the South back a century. Well, yeah, it would be absurd, if anyone had argued that. Buchanan is clowning, and Mother Jones is helping him. Why? From what I know of the contemporary attack machine, any statement from the candidate himself that compared Obama '08 to the great movements for freedom and justice in our history would have been quite the controversy, what with the McCain camp already mocking his messiah complex and calling him "The One." Why would Mother Jones, a progressive magazine, accuse Obama of the same thing McCain is attacking him for? It didn't make a lot of sense, especially without a quote, link, or reference point. So I wrote to David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, asking him: where did Obama make this claim? What were you guys talking about? He kindly sent me an excerpt from a speech given by Obama. He said it should have been part of the introduction to the published forum, but somehow wasn't. (Okaaay... so you're going to fix that, right?) This is what Mother Jones editors sent to the participants along with the question, "Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in US history?" I present it as a public service. See if you can find the point where that particular comparison is made. I couldn't, but I am just one reader. Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up. Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can." That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots declaring independence against a mighty British empire--nobody gave them a chance--but they said, "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system, and how a new president charted a course to ensure we would not remain half slave and half free. That's how the greatest generation--my grandfather fighting in Patton's Army, my grandmother staying at home with a baby and still working on a Bomber assembly line--how that greatest generation overcame Hitler and fascism, and also lifted themselves up out of a Great Depression. That's how pioneers went West when people told them it was dangerous, they said, "Yes we can." That's how immigrants traveled from distant shores when people said their fates would be uncertain, "Yes we can." That's how women won the right to vote, how workers won the right to organize, how young people like you traveled down South to march and sit in and go to jail, and some were beaten and some died for freedom's cause. That's what hope is. That's what hope is. That's what hope is. That moment when we shed our fears and our doubts. When we don't settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept. Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom. When we instead join arm in arm and decide we are going to remake this country, block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is. There's a moment in the life of every generation, when that spirit has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment. This is our time. Okay, Huff Posters: Which comes closest to your view? 1.) Sure enough, Obama in this excerpt "compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in US history" and Mother Jones caught him at it, puncturing the Obama hype. Good for them! 2.) No, Obama does not "claim that his campaign is comparable to the great progressive movements in U.S. history." Not even close. Mother Jones is engaging in the kind of audacious hype it claims to be opposing. Bad move. 3.) It doesn't matter whether Obama himself actually said anything like that because his supporters believe his campaign is a movement of transcendent historical importance, and that's what Mother Jones really meant, it's just that the editors phrased it badly, attributing to the candidate claims that have been made by others about him. My vote is for 2.) Yours? And if you have a better text where the claim is made that "Barack Obama for president" is like the great social movements of the past, send it along. (This speech to the NAACP might have had that language in it, but doesn't.) I've been around the block before on an issue like this. (""Mother Jones invites you to question if the Politics 2.0 revolution really lives up to its hype.") I think the editors should correct their mistake, which was to publish this feature without any reference point or link. That would be "smart, fearless journalism," circa World Wide Web. They should add that Obama didn't explicitly make the claims they are accusing him of making, unless they have a passage where he does. I'll update you if anything happens. UPDATE (Aug. 20, 10:00 pm) The editor of Mother Jones replies and the magazine adjusts its feature online, adding the text of the speech that participants were reacting to. That corrects for part of what's wrong with it. Dan Kennedy, The audacity of Mother Jones. "I think the truth is #2 plus a strong dose of #3, along with at least a slight whiff of #1.... It's not so much that MoJo is completely wrong; it's that the magazine is being reductionist and stupid. Why?" At the MoJo blog, Jonathan Stein posts Obama's Historical Comparisons, with more explanation. "Obama does indeed put himself in a historical context alongside the great progressive movements of the last century," he says. "Do I personally think that Obama sees his candidacy as on par with the civil rights movement or Revolutionary War soldiers? No." Hmmm. But it's okay for the magazine to suggest it? CJR's Campaign Desk read it. Mother Jones's Obama feature falls flat. Kennedy points to this earlier observation by Jonathan Stein at the MoJo blog, back in February. Barack Obama's Messiah Complex. Definitely worth reading. Does this post play unhelpfully into the pernicious and growing Obamaism-as-cult meme that we'll likely see repeated over and over by the right wing if Obama gets the nomination? It does. Sorry. But Obama's rhetoric makes an undeniable suggestion: that his election, not an eight-year administration that successfully implements his vision for America, would represent a moment in America of the grandest, most transformative kind. And that's a bit much.

August 20, 2008, 10:35 AM

Three Questions For ABC News About Its Anthrax Reporting

No need for a big preamble. Dan Gillmor and I are posting these questions simultaneously. (Here's his case for them.) We think ABC News should answer them. They arise from two columns by Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who has been tracking this story for some time. * Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News, in which he shows that ABC News was probably duped by someone on a story of huge importance, putting Iraqi fingerprints on anthrax attacks that actually came from the U.S at a time when the case for war with Iraq was beginning to get traction. (Salon.com, Aug. 1) * Journalists, their lying sources, and the anthrax investigation in which he makes the case for revealing the sources who completely misled ABC News or lied to it, including precedents where journalists have done just that. (Salon.com, Aug. 3) If you want to understand our questions, go read Greenwald now. Back? Greenwald raises many different kinds of questions. Some are aimed at a possible Congressional investigation, others at journalists willing to investigate further from here. On Saturday morning, Dan Gillmor and I had the same thought when we read Greenwald's post: "ABC News has to respond." But to what, exactly? We tried to put it into three questions: tough but fair as people there would probably say on other occasions. And we're simply asking others who want to know the answers to post the questions in some form at your own site. I would call them "interlocking" and aimed at the same unknowns. Three Vital Questions for ABC News About its Anthrax Reporting in 2001 1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement? 2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the "four well-placed and separate sources" who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001? 3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into public debate because of faulty reporting by ABC News. How that happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were misled? There are many other questions worth asking in what is still a very murky story. But Dan and I think these three go to the heart of what ABC ought to tell us. My reasoning? Though I am a frequent critic of the practice, I am not against the use of confidential sources. I am quite aware of how important it is in national security reporting to promise some sources confidentiality. And I am sympathetic to the pleas of journalists who have made contracts: "we have to keep our word or sources won't trust us." That is true. But the only way such a system can work is when sources know: if you lie, or mislead the reporter into a false report you will be exposed. People who believe strongly in the need for confidential sources should be strongly in favor of their exposure in clear cases of abuse, because that is the only way a practice like this has a prayer of retaining its legitimacy. What's a "clear case" of abuse? Well, we have to argue about it-- and try to be clear. There's no other way. Each case is different. Each has particulars that count. In the confidential sources system that we have, professionals keeping counsel with themselves bargain away the citizen's right to know. Sitting outside that transaction, we're supposed to trust them-- in the dark, as it were. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we are unable to judge how good a bargain they struck for us because the names of their sources remain cloaked. Which is why we can never trust them if they can't take action when they get played. This looks like a case where ABC News got played. Looks like, I said. We can't know until the good people there answer some questions. These three would be a good start. Also see my colleague Dan Gillmor, ABC Has Major Questions to Answer in Anthrax Story. "The network's hyperventilating broadcasts of leaked, false allegations purportedly tying the anthrax to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime was bad enough. What the organization is doing now is journalistically unforgivable..." Some other reactions: Ex-Times-Picayune investigative reporter (and Pulitzer winner) John McQuaid says, "It's imperative for ABC to tell us what happened here." He also says: "Big media and the government are already in a kind credibility death spiral. This doesn't help." At Media Nation, Dan Kennedy joins our campaign: "ABC News has some explaining to do." Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it's clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession -- and the rest of us -- better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I'd say the latter. At a guess, Brian Ross is re-reporting this story as we speak. I'd be shocked if he were doing anything else -- and I'd say that part of that re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it. Scott Rosenberg: when sources lie or mislead, "the public good probably demands that you expose them." Hmmm. Found this from March. Fox News says it got hold of an email: In an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues. "Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same ... his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'" It's the [name redacted] part that intrigues me. If it was redacted by Fox, as opposed to whoever gave it to Fox, that would mean Fox knows something. Shocker! Columbia Journalism Review isn't sure. At this point, nothing but questions. Liz Cox Barrett writes: In ABC News's case, what point does it serve to out these people? Would it be instructive/cautionary to future lying sources, as Drum suggests? Is it just vengeance? What might be gained and lost if journalists in general adopted a you lie to me, I out you sort of ground rule? Would we get fewer leaks but leaks of higher quality? Missed stories? What if ABC News's sources didn't knowingly lie? If ABC News outs its sources in the face of public outrage (or, at least blogospheric outrage), what precedent does that set? Translation: "Our constituency doesn't like ruckus this at all. Not one bit." CJR is promising to look into the matter some more this week, which is good. Freelance journalist Wendy Hoke posts our questions at her blog and says that ABC's anthrax coverage throws a curious light on attempts to pass a Federal shield law. The New Republic's Dayo Olopade: "Pressure on ABC to out their sources should be swift and sustained." The New Republic's John Judis: "I join those who believe that some kind of congressional investigation is in order. There are too many echoes of Niger and uranium." Except for this part, which doesn't echo with Niger at all: "Reports that the anthrax letters sent to the offices of Senate majority leader Tom Daschle contained the additive bentonite - known to be used by Iraq - were dismissed by the White House." The Guardian, Oct. 31, 2001. Marcy Wheeler: "Who First Spread the Iraqi Anthrax Claim?" Important. Lawbeat blog from the Syracuse University J-school: "Yet another illustration of the dangers of relying on anonymous sources and the rush to judgment when only part of the story comes out via shadowy channels." Journalist Charles Feldman posts our questions: "It is vital that ABC News tells the American public how it came by its anthrax stories to see just who it was who manipulated the network and for what purpose."

August 4, 2008, 2:42 AM