By PHK
Helen Thomas’ latest book, Watchdogs of Democracy? is a reflection on and lamentation about the profession of American journalism today. Its subtitle is “The waning Washington press corps and how it has failed the public.”
“Watchdogs” is laced with personal anecdotes and remembrances of better times, scrappier journalists and far more competent political leaders. It also provides words of caution and explanation to an American public as to why and how the US media uncritically sold the Bush administration’s concocted WMD story in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Then when WMD turned up missing, W changed the narrative numerous times. Thomas details how the MSM let him get away with it hook, line and sinker.
Much of Thomas’ story has been told before – but there are knowledgeable, well-read Americans who still fail to grasp the ramifications of the erosion of the “Fourth Estate” over the past 15 or so years. They continue to ask why the public is so poorly informed about events of the day and how the context for putting those events in perspective has disappeared.
Others attack Thomas personally, not for what she says but because it’s clear they continue to follow this self-proclaimed “war president’s” line without bothering to read, listen or think about how his imperial presidency contorts the country’s democratic form of government by restricting the public’s right to know and impeding the media’s responsibility to inform them.
As I write this review (WV was one of the blogs offered a review copy from Simon and Schuster and I jumped at the chance), the outing of the long before outed Swift consortium international terrorist financial transaction monitoring story by the New York Times and several other major U.S. newspapers is being castigated by the right with equal amounts of vituperative venom, political bias – and lack of information – that got the country into the ill-fated Iraq invasion to start. These same people have also unsurprisingly turned on Helen Thomas for raising hard questions and demanding – to no avail - the truth.
Ever more reason that readable, reasonably short books on why the MSM has too often failed the U.S. public written by well known personalities and veteran practitioners like Thomas are always welcome.
What went wrong?
In short, she, like others who follow or work in the media, point to the corporate takeovers during the 1980s and 1990s, the relaxation of FCC rules, the demise of UPI (AP’s only wire service competitor) and the consequent rise of the electronic media’s infotainment as the major culprits that allowed this sorry state of affairs to happen. She also describes the concurrent tendencies throughout the years of increasing presidential control over what gets printed and what does not regardless of party or president in power. But she demonstrates that above all, this administration – in the name of its over- and ill-used justification of “national security” – has gone far beyond any before it - for its own venal purposes - to restrict information and curtail a democratic public’s need to know.
Yes, Thomas is biased in her contempt for W and his administration: she makes no bones about it. This comes through in spades in her descriptions of spokesmen Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan’s ill-treatment of her personally in the run-up to the 2003 invasion – when she still reported for AP and was dean of the White House correspondents. She includes a transcript of her questions – and their answers – which led to her ostracism. In the end, she lost her battle with the White House – not her press credentials, but her ability to question. Instead, administration cheerleaders in the conservative press -lobbing softball questions the administration so loves - have dominated press briefings. These same venal and now politically desperate people have threatened to withdraw accreditation for the New York Times White House correspondent simply because the newspaper decided to publish the international financial monitoring story despite the fact it has been in the public domain since 2002.
Then and now
To be fair, in my brief encounters with the traveling White House press corps in 1990 and again in 1992, I did not see the scrappy reporters in action that Thomas describes with such nostalgia. The White House press in those end-of-the-Cold War days may well have asked Bush’s father, then president, and other government spokespeople far more probing questions than their replacements ask today. 
But if I remember correctly, these same members of the media expected government briefers to come to them – in their specially equipped off-site press room – rather than going after the stories that happened outside their cocoon. There were, in fact, unexpected turns of events and unscripted stories particularly in 1992 they missed as a result.
What was probably different then – as opposed to now – is that the major news organizations had other reporters on site to cover what those attached by an umbilical cord to the president and his team missed. This was before entertainment and other companies bought out the MSM, then downsized it while, as Thomas points out, demanding unreasonably high profit margins.
Thomas also deplores the diminished educational level of today’s White House press corps – albeit a different generation from hers – and the willingness of their corporate masters to let them – or encourage them – to regurgitate unquestioning any administration story. She bemoans the younger generation’s lack of historical knowledge that precludes them from placing events and presidential assertions in context. I suspect she’s right. The best political reporters and editors I knew had majored in history, international or comparative politics or even American government, classics or English. They were smart, strong substantively, not easily fooled and wrote fast and well. They went after stories. They had often learned the process of journalism on the job. But the precipitous reduction of courses at the high school and university level in history, political science, government, politics, international affairs and foreign languages that began in the aftermath of Vietnam when this country turned inward may well have diminished the knowledge base of even our top reporters. A deficiency the W administration deftly plays upon like a concert violinist plucking a Stradivarius’ G string.
The demise of watchdog media – but what about the blogosphere?
In her Epilogue, Thomas bemoans the demise of the MSM’s critical faculties. She’s right. She, however, like far too many journalists brought up in the era of complete MSM domination of communications fails to understand the role or power of blogs. She states that bloggers are not journalists. On the one hand, I sympathize. The Gannan/Guckert fiasco is certainly a case in point – but whose fault was that? Was Gannan/Guckert a blogger? I thought he was a paid political flack with a sordid personal past. And what about Judy Miller’s biased reporting day after day on the front page of the New York Times?
On the other hand, there are bloggers who are or were journalists and others who before becoming bloggers themselves were sought out as experts and sources of information by the MSM. Just read Victor Comras’s recent post on counterterrorism.org. Comras, one of the U.S. government's major specialists in counterterrorist financing before retiring from the State Department and becoming a blogger demolishes the administration’s ludicrous claims that the New York Times published a previously tightly held story and in so doing damaged US national security.
There are also blogs that break stories, provide information, and put things in context not previously in the MSM. This includes WhirledView">Whirledview.
Others argue that the blogosphere performs the watchdog role that the MSM has abdicated. Blogs not only monitor the government, other blogs but also the MSM itself. Even with some of the best editors around the MSM has been known to make colossal errors in judgment. Thomas herself pointed out some of the worst – including Judith Miller - and the loss of public trust as a result. Yet I wonder: Is there really such a difference between someone who started a penny newspaper in earlier times and a blogger who writes a blog today. Both had opinions, information or both they want to convey to a wider public.
But to me, the most troubling aspect of critiques like “Watchdogs” as to what ails today’s MSM and our larger political environment is that the underlying deficiencies Thomas and others identify run so deep they can not be undone with the flick of a switch – or a change of administration. Now on to the next step: would someone please suggest how to correct them?
Photo identifications: 1) Book cover "Watchdogs of Democracy" The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Publicy by Helen Thomas, New York: A Lisa Drew Book/Scribner (Simon and Schuster, Inc.; 2) By PHKushlis: White House Correspondents Press Room, Intercontinental Hotel Ball Room, Helsinki, Finland, September 9, 1990 during GWH Bush meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.