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By Dennis Byrne
April 3, 2006
Is The New York Times going bi-polar, or what?
The nation's imperial paper recently said it wouldn't engage in off-the-record sit-downs with President Bush, an invitation that other papers have accepted with no twinges of conscience. Not so the Times. Explained a top executive to Editor & Publisher, a newspaper industry publication: "As a matter of policy and practice, we would prefer when possible to conduct on-the-record interviews with public officials."
Oh, come on.
The Times--like many newspapers--feeds off anonymous sources, especially if the leak trashes the Bush administration. A Times reporter spent months in jail for refusing to reveal an anonymous source, and the newspaper happily ran leaked, classified information about the wiretapping of international conversations with terrorists.
So, save us the baloney. The public knows that anonymous sources usually spill information that benefits the spiller or his interests. Yes, the public understands that an occasional unnamed source is useful in exposing wrongdoing. But it also understands that the many "high purposes" the media use to justify the unabashed spread of "spin" (it used to be called propaganda) under the cloak of secrecy is just bunk.
Yet, the Times and others continue to embarrass the business with this kind of transparent nonsense. It's one reason that newspaper circulation and the viewership of evening network news are declining. Like a gravely ill patient that refuses to listen to a glum diagnosis, too many of my colleagues greet criticisms of a liberal media bias with a closed-minded, "I'm sick of hearing it."
Just like they did after Bush recently joined in the criticism. "The kind of progress that we and the Iraqi people are making in places like Tal Afar is not easy to capture in a short clip on the evening news," he said. "Footage of children playing, or shops opening, and people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an IED explosion, or the destruction of a mosque, or soldiers and civilians being killed or injured."
Editor & Publisher followed up with a story, "Iraq reporters hit back at claims they are biased on war coverage." Taking the offensive, they replied that the administration itself fails to come up with enough good news stories, and when it does, reporters don't get enough protection to go out and safely cover the story.
Those of us who haven't been in a war zone criticize the work of war correspondents at our own peril. Yet, for all the assertions that little or no good news is to be found in Iraq, it is simple to find some on the Internet from, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is helping rebuild Iraq. (Why is it called "rebuilding" Iraq, when it was a sorry state before the war? Shouldn't we be talking about "building" Iraq?)
Billions of dollars of highway and other public works projects; new safety nets for the poor and vulnerable, entrepreneurial opportunities, a free press, leadership training--all requisites for successful self-government. For all the stories about power shortages, for example, how many explain that they are partly the result of exploding demand, a good sign of economic progress?
Oddly, some journalists give little credence to such official, attributable reports. In today's upside-down world, official government reports don't carry the same weight as whispered, unattributed reports.
News often is defined as something that didn't happen before, or rarely happens. So, if indeed little good is happening in Iraq, every piece of (rare) good news ought to be reported with the same fervor as every act of violence--which we're to believe is an increasingly common occurrence. And, logically, less deserving of reporting. Or does the absence of reporting "good news" in a country the size of Iraq actually mean that reporters can find absolutely nothing good?
If all this is confusing, it's nothing compared to the confusion shared by the American public about what actually is happening in Iraq. The media's credibility has become so strained that partisans on both sides have to admit in good conscience that they're unsure of what's real. Obviously, this isn't good for a democracy.
So, the media might give more thought to being less defensive, and more objective, not just in covering the news, but also in evaluating their own performance. The public would appreciate that kind of good news.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant.
E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net
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