What Did You Do When the First Amendment Died?
Matt Welch | May 16, 2005, 7:35pm
The Issy Hissy, right on schedule, has already produced several fully formed mountains of armchair bullshit. My favorite part so far is how people who are pounding Newsweek for attributing information to an anonymous government source who was either misconstrued or changed his story post-facto, have reckoned that the best way to respond to this mistake is by blatantly mischaracterizing it as a deliberate "lie." We may yet come to discover that the Newsweek reporters knowingly misstated the truth, but I've seen no evidence so far. Also, I've heard rumors before that government officials have been known to lie in the name of National Security.
Rather than deal with any of that, I would like to zero in on an arcane side-argument from Glenn Reynolds:
I WARNED EARLIER that if Americans concluded that the press was on the other side, the consequences would be dire. [...] I'm a big fan of freedom of the press. I think it's too bad that the journalistic profession is ruining things for everybody through the hubris, irresponsibility, sloppiness, and outright agenda-driven bias of its practitioners.
There are three things to respond to here. 1) If Americans conclude that "the press was on the other side," I am utterly, 100 percent convinced that Americans would be wrong, a point I tried to make last July, when Reynolds was praising a Mort Kondracke column that claimed "The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq." Why do I think it's wrong? Because I've known maybe 300 American journalists fairly well in my life, and not one -- really, 0 out of 300 -- could accurately be described as being "on the other side," actively rooting for the United States to lose wars. There's a selection bias, I'll grant you, and I'm not the sharpest cookie in the barnyard, but realize also that the majority of those people are on the political left, and quite a few on the Progressive Naderite end. If the press was indeed on the other side, wouldn't at least, I dunno 100 of those people be rooting against the home team? Or are they all just sleeper agents? (Reynolds also knows scores of journalists; I wonder how many he considers to be Benedict Arnolds....) 2) If "Americans concluded that the press was on the other side," not only would Americans be wrong, but it would be their own damned fault, and not because "the journalistic profession is ruining things for everybody." Why? Firstly because the journalistic profession, as we are reminded daily by people like Glenn Reynolds, has less and less power to do anything, let alone ruin things for everybody. But mostly it's because people are responsible for their own behavior, especially in a society blessed with as much information and freedom as ours. If they choose to form their opinions based on those who are too quick with the Treason card ... that's on them. If I choose to support the shredding of the Second Amendment, is it my fault, or the fault of the NRA, or of legal gun owners who commit crimes, or of a media that feeds me anti-gun messages? I vote me. 3) Without question, there will continue to be more, not less, "outright agenda-driven bias" in journalism, as the market becomes richer with choice. And much of that output will continue coming from the right side of the political spectrum, as a corrective to the fish-don't-feel-the-water bias of the dreaded MSM. If that's a key factor in undermining public support for the First Amendment, then we're in for some rough seas ahead.
Reynolds has written on this theme many many times before, usually asking leading questions like, "What happens if the public comes to regard the press as untrustworthy and un-American?" Well, the legal climate for speech may continue to contract (even as the practical climate expands), and each and every person who actively participates in the de-liberalization should be called very nasty names from a distance of 10 paces. And yes, I can see where journalists would have some soul-searching to do about their own unwitting contribution to the process (though my beef is more with their fair-weathered support of the First Amendment, their enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold, and their eagerness to expand police power). But if we're to ladle out blame for the pending First Amendment collapse on journalists who have a dispute with one source, let's save a drop or two for commentators who have encouraged their readers to believe the falsehood that professional reporters have been showing up to work all these years to carry out a specific agenda to undermine America.
Matt Welch | May 17, 2005, 1:48am | #
John -- "So what if they contacted the military"? The "so what" is that it directly contradicts your previous statement of: "they just print[ed] it with apparently no efforts to at least give the military a chance to give its side of the story." I thought that might be a relevant observation.
As for "the fact is they got it wrong," my question to you is: How could you possibly know? Beyond the wrongness of calling a single source "sources," that is. Have you seen the report in question, and can confirm there is no Koran-flushing in it? This is not a defense of their story; if the story was reported better, we wouldn't be here. But we still don't know whether the allegation is true or false, and I don't know if we will any time soon.
Tell me with a straight face that if this story had involved a liberal baliwick like race relations they would not have thought long and hard about publishing it and probably would not have published it or if they had it would have been after absolute proof of its truth.
As a matter of fact, the story *did* involve race relations & clashing cultural differences, so I don't think my face's straightness is required.
The fact is that it wasn't a liberal balywick, it was the military and they didn't care if printing it got a few people killed.
If you're that omniscient, I hope for your family's sake that you live in Las Vegas, and bet heavily.... I would bet you three donuts that Michael Isikoff cares pretty damned deeply that people have been killed in something called "the Newsweek riots." I'd be devastated, personally, though he likely has much thicker skin, what with being a longtime high-profile investigative reporter & all.
You say "Actions ought to have consquences," and I basically agree, though not in any command-economy type of way. So let me ask you this -- when you yourself create the "action" of stating, falsely and publicly, that the reporters made "no efforts to at least give the military a chance to give its side of the story," what should be the consequence? From the way you've responded, the answer would seem to be you saying "So what?" At least some in the dreaded MSM have the habit of correcting and apologizing promptly, even if in this case I am not precisely sure yet what they are apologizing for.
Fritz | May 17, 2005, 9:07am | #
Matt,
Hobson nailed it, a frequent pattern in your modes of argumentation. Like substituting your own particularly narrow interpretation of a shorthand term widely used in many contexts, having in general usage a broader connotation.
Of course much of the mainstream press wants a Vietnam-type outcome (NOT 58,000 dead) or a Watergate-type outcome (NOT presidential resignation on an August afternoon, turning over the office to an un-elected VP former Congressman from Michigan).
The history of using journalism as a means of leveraging public opinion and perceptions of history in ways that makes the military look bad, the exercise of American power throughout the world in ways they disagree with, proving that those in power are corrupt or deceitful, etc. Poorly worded here because of haste, but many practicioners of journalism get their thrills playing gotcha and pushing their agendas.
I have known many journalists, a few household names, and there is no doubt about their motivations and proclivities.
Oh yeah, and the speaking truth to power thrill kind of gets softened when a Democrat is in the White House. Clinton, what corruption, nothing to see here. Looky, what a bunch of nasty enemies he has, looky over there!
In your narrow definition they are not motivated by a primal desire to see America fail. But the effect of their desires is to see the some elements of the American power structure fail in ways that do harm to certain American interests and the general public. Simply collateral damage, not their fault. Pity the poor, imperfect republic that occasionally elects people with agendas that do not conform to the media party line.
xxxxswsx | May 17, 2005, 10:00am | #
The lefty MSM seems to thrive off problems for the US. Example: I watched PBS newshour last night and the reporter who was/is embedded with the US military in the western Iraq operation was interviewed (and wrote the death of a squad bit). It was billed as an explaination/recap of what happened in that operation. If I had only listened to her report this is what I would have learned about the operation:
US failed to set up its bridging operation and delayed its attack. US took fire from mortors.
US squad faced better equipped ('outgunned') foes that killed 2 and wounded many others in house to house combat. No mention of any enemy death, wounded or captured.
That squad was then 'destroyed' by a mine. All killed or wounded. No mention of any sucessess.
US found no terrorists nor any weapons after the combat in any of the other towns or villages.
Terrorists in open control of other towns. US too weak to move against them.
That was it. No mention of anyone captured/killed. It sounded like a complete failure of the US.
Does that sound unbaised to anyone?
The MSM serves the Terrorists. If they does this unwilliningly or not it does not matter. The MSM rushes to report in gory detail any bombing or killng the terrorist do (even though they know that this is the whole point of the bombing is to get media attention) and drag their feet to report anything that puts the US military or gov't in a decent light.
Bah, why not delay the bombing report for a day or two? Why not try some real reporting that does not directly aid the terrorists?
Maybe then the public would start to trust the media once again.
As of today they appear to be short-sighted self-serving slimes who are interested in only tearing down those who are actually trying to do good in the world.
Dan H. | May 17, 2005, 11:39am | #
I don't think the media is 'hoping for America to fail'. Bias is more insidious than that. If you believe in your heart of hearts that the war is wrong, doomed to failure, and if your biases run to thinking that the military is full of thugs and rednecks and people that make you feel icky, then when a source comes along that confirms things you already believe, your natural skepticism drops and you tend to be more credulous.
The right wing press did it will some of the WMD stories, and the left does it with stories critical of the administration, the military, and the war.
A good example is the media reaction to the SwiftVets (without getting into the merits of their arguments), compared to their treatment of people who came forward to claim that Bush was a draft dodger. The Swiftvets said something that most in the media really, really didn't want to believe. So they went into full-on investigative mode, trying to find anyone to discredit them, refusing to run stories until they had 'balance' and numerous corroborating accounts, etc. A reporter from the Boston Globe went on the News Hour and snottily informed the guests that the story wasn't being reported because it didn't meet the lofty confirmation requirements of the mainstream media. Maybe those silly bloggers could run it because they didn't fact-check anything, but the serious media never reports anything unless they have indisputable evidence.
But hell, when Dan Rather has a shady source produce a questionable document, by God they had to run with it, because they already knew it was true. The document was just confirmation of what everyone in the news room already believed. And when this story came to Newsweek, they ran it because it confirms their own prejudices about how the military behaves.
As for whether they actually want the war to be lost, I'm sure some on the extreme ends do. I've been following this controversy on some left-wing message boards, and the comments there run the gamut from "fake but accurate" (this source may have been wrong, but everyone knows the military does stuff like this all the time), to outright glee that America has had its nose rubbed, and now maybe everyone would see the true colors of this imperialistic administration. Plus a smattering of people who have been hoping for a military disaster because it will teach America not to meddle in the world and prevent future military adventures. I'm sure there are at least some in the media who share these sentiments, given the overwhelmingly liberal makeup of most reporters.
thoreau | May 17, 2005, 12:28pm | #
The allegations in the Newsweek story, unless there have been developments today I haven't seen yet, originally came from a U.S. government official, not enemy propagandits.
See, the 5th column is even more entrenched than we realized! The terrorists have infiltrated the government as well as the media!
OK, to be serious, let me pose this question: The MSM is being bashed for allegedly not doing enough fact-checking before going public. Fair enough, but let me ask the bloggers this question: How would a blogger handle it?
Since most bloggers don't have the same extensive contacts and army of reporters and interns and fact checkers as a typical major news magazine, I always understood that the blogosphere relies on "distributed expertise": A story starts to circulate, and as it circulates more and more people with different backgrounds and areas of expertise weigh in on it.
That's certainly how Dan Rather's memos were revealed as fakes. It wasn't any single source that persuaded me (indeed, there were a few supposedly knowledgeable people who initially said that the right kinds of typewriters were available in the 1970's). It was the sheer volume of evidence: Such typewriters, though available, were rare; no typewriter had the same combination of features; it was a perfect match to Microsoft Word; it didn't use appropriate military jargon; etc.
So my understanding is that the blogosphere's way of operating is not to sit on stories. Rather, it's to let information circulate and be exposed to analysis by many different people.
Anyway, the point in all of this is that, as I understand, the blogosphere's approach to this story would have been to let it circulate just as Newsweek did. The provocative nature of the claim suggests that it would have circulated quite widely in some circles. Some angry guy in South Asia still could have picked up on the story and started telling people, local newspapers could have then run with it, and the whole sordid affair could have unfolded in the same way.
I don't know that the blogosphere approach to reporting would be any more responsible than the approach of consulting a few government sources to verify. It would still get out.
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