A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I solicited your ideas and promised some of my own thoughts on how to aid and abet do-it-yourself media criticism. The response was heavy enough that I’ve violated my usual practice of answering every e-mail, though I have read them all now. Consider this a wholesale thank you to all who wrote.
My own idea is simplicity itself and probably not very original, though I do think it would prove surprisingly helpful to press watchers. Now that transcripts of just about every government press briefing are available online, the communications offices at the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and elsewhere should take the extra step of identifying by name the reporters who ask questions.
Technically, this shouldn’t be too onerous; the reporters tend to be regulars who have already received credentials and can therefore be easily identified. Plus, I’m sure the reporters wouldn’t mind being identified. They are already known to their peers in the room and are well aware that their reputation partly depends on the caliber of their repartee with the briefer. Almost without exception, they all have an extremely high opinion of their own well-crafted queries and would welcome being recognized for them.
Mainly, though, for regular readers of transcripts, it would add a lot of useful texture to know who asked what. Sure, you can occasionally figure it out–as in this exchange from last Friday’s White House briefing:
MR. FLEISCHER: . . . So [Secretary of State Colin Powell] has reported progress, and remains–that remains the mission of the Secretary. The President will measure results. The President will measure results once the murder-bombings like today stop, when the environment for peace can be created, and when all the parties that he has sought action from take the actions he has expressed.
Q: Does the President also equally condemn the killing of hundreds of Palestinians and the destruction of the West Bank with American-made weapons?
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, again, the President has made his point clear–
Q: Equally condemn.
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the President has made his point clear. People who strap explosives around them, civilians who go into civilian areas for the purpose–
Q: Well, aren’t the Palestinians civilians?
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think we know you have a different opinion, but let me answer your question.
Q: I want to know, are they civilians or not?
MR. FLEISCHER: Let me answer your question. The President believes that people who strap explosives around their waist as civilians who go board buses, who go to hotels on the eve of Passover, who go where you can find civilians for the purpose of murdering civilians, are terrorists.”
Even without Ari Fleischer’s identification of “Helen” in the transcript, you can guess in this case from the cool, even-handed, professional tone, not to mention the impeccable manners, that Fleischer was being interrogated by the inimitable ex-UPIer Helen Thomas.
But in most cases you can’t tell who asks the questions. So whaddya say, Ari, Torie, et al? How about a little glasnost for the growing legion of media watchers? Let’s put some names in the transcripts instead of all those Q’s.
Now, for some of your comments and suggestions:
-“One of the big problems with at least our major newspapers is that they seldom, if ever, publicly correct or address the foundation on which much of their reporting rests. Nor do they take criticism in this respect seriously unless it comes from another ‘elite’ source. I take as my test case on this subject, the stories that ran over a month ago in the Washington Post on civilian casualties in Afghanistan. These stories were run on page 1, sometimes above the fold, based entirely on the hearsay evidence of Afghan villagers whose reputation for veracity can vary from hour to hour depending on whom they’re speaking to. I e-mailed Michael Getler, the Post’s ombudsman on this point, countless times. No response until Michael Fumento from the Hudson Institute weighed in with a letter. The Internet has been a godsend for informed, educated citizens to keep a watch on the news they get.”
-“I had not been aware of the Wolfowitz-Chronicle dustup, but as a working journalist, I find such transcripts invaluable for quotes and for following the day-to-day statements (and changes) in public policy. In short, the transcripts are a boon for journalists, not a threat.”
-“The easiest way for the media to show their professionalism would be for the various newspapers, magazines, etc. the record all interviews (just as the Pentagon is doing) and provide that footage to whoever wanted it. This would force the media to be a little more honest, but it would also show that they want the American people to believe they are telling the truth. Unless, of course, they don’t care what the American people believe . . .”
-“You asked for ideas about furthering the revolution of do-it-yourself media criticism. Another advantage to the Internet is that stories with a local bent in news magazines like Newsweek and Time can be fact-checked against the version offered by small-town local newspapers, which are usually available online, and which also usually have a more nuanced approach to the story.”
-“Our only hope to be freed from the bonds of bigoted and partisan media management is the Internet. We can immediately go to the net and access sources from all over the world. From that can come a more balanced view. The excesses and bias of the media are leading to their complete discreditation in the eyes of the public. I predict that what is taking place now will accelerate in pace.”
-“As a former journalist who has spent the last 14 years on the other side of the microphone–trying to get a fair treatment of my employer(s) . . . I LOVE the idea of online media criticism. The Smarter Times is great. Opinion Journal is wonderful. . . . I think it would be GREAT if some institution would set up a PRESS WATCHDOG site similar to Smarter Times on a regional basis. In my area, that would include the SF Chronicle (aka Pravda of the West), San Jose Murky News, Sacto Bee, and the smaller regional papers. Combined circulation is in the millions, and they all tend to cop the same lines, so there should be plenty of daily fodder. Contributors would be encouraged to cc any requests for corrections or clarifications that they send the newspapers to this website as well, so that there’s a record of how the paper responds.”
-“I wish someone would set up a web-site–a clearinghouse, so to speak–where people could e-mail details of inaccuracies in news reports that could be vetted and then sent out in a mass e-mailing to subscribers. Hundreds or thousands of angry letters to editors may (I stress “may,” as we must remember with whom we are dealing here) force tighter reins on biased reporting. Technology has made the information available–it’s just not evenly distributed.”
-“As Drudge is often a portal serving various news sources, there ought to be portal devoted exclusively to webloggers, who might be seen collectively as a Truth Squad. Suppose for example that the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Constitution each had analogues to Smartertimes.com. And suppose further that all of these weblogs were accessible on a “one stop shop” portal. In an age where even a busy person can, over the net, scan the main stories and op-ed pages of a dozen newspapers daily, there ought to be a weblog tracking these fellows. Full time beats part time every time.”
-“Foundation grants for weblogs. What an enormously useful tool for training prospective journalists, writers and so forth. If weblogs begin showing up, they may even force the dreaded beast of the left–competition–to begin stalking newsrooms. Knowing that there is a “they” who is also knowing might contribute to a startling rise in journalistic ethics. Hey . . . what are the odds that Doris Kearns Goodwin writes her next tome at Kinkos?”
-“Begin to address the issue of corporate practices of the entities that own newspapers. Not to be peevish here, but before retirement, I was a financial guy–read annual reports, 10Ks, 10Qs, S4s, etc., for a living. You wouldn’t believe the stuff one can intuit from these things. The only difference between say, Acme Electronics and the entity that owns the NYT is that Acme isn’t telling the world how to live; consequently, there’s no exposure value in ‘proving’ that its workers are routinely screwed, managers overpaid, embarrassing lawsuits settled, and the rest of it.”
-“Tool up the reporting on the reporters. Their own newspapers have, over the years, called for billions of rules for disclosing political contributions, licenses for every conceivable activity, FOIA stuff, and paper galore! If Michel Foucault was right, and there is no such thing as objective truth, then hey, we need to know a lot more about the biases of the individual who actually pens the story. What’s his bio, what boards does he sit on, political contributions made, is he straight, gay, black, white, Samoan-American. You get the drift. Newspapers need to voluntarily disclose this stuff. They should welcome this with the same fervor as the Harvard professoriate will the unionization of their graduate students!”
-“A place to look for an idea of how media criticism can be done is kuro5hin.org. It is not a media site per se, it is mainly a place where techies hang out (and has, of late, been invaded by some of the more whiny left). But it does demonstrate how news stories can be made more balanced. You see, when a story is posted, you can comment on that story. And the comment can include hyperlinks to material which can rebut (or support) the story.”
-“For do-it-yourself media criticism, and the SF Chronicle in particular, check out: ChronWatch.com. The site gives you info and background, including the editorial you discussed.”
-“Blogs with links, discussion boards . . . and ‘whatevers’ such as DrudgeReport.com are probably enough. As you can see from the number of e-mail reactions to your request, there are literally thousands of bright, energetic minds trolling the net for accurate and inaccurate info 24 hours of every day.”
I’m not sure how this correspondent knew so much about the number of reactions I was getting, but it was a good guess. Thanks for the above ideas and others, in no particular order, to Milton J. Turner Jr., Gary Haubold, Bruce Lloyd, Bill Harrison, John King, Dave McIntyre, Brandt Zembsch, Kit Case, Scott D. Abercrombie, Pennie Marchetti, John Swails, Jill Singleton, Henry Schwaeble, Richard F. Miller, Art Hughes, and Ralph R. Echtinaw.
Richard Starr is a managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
