More Thoughts
About this.
I'm really interested in this, for the time being, from a very narrow perspective of how the journalism works. Imagine you could find an intelligent person who'd been in a clamshell for the last five years and feed him these two sets of quotes:
side by side with:
And you told him to pick which one was "fiercely attacking" and which one was "abruptly conciliatory," or whatever. I can imagine he'd be puzzled by the choice.
I'm not cherry-picking quotes. Those are the ones the news wire stories are built on. One from last week, one from Sunday/Monday. I'm not going to the press conference transcripts on the White House Web site to see the totality of what was said. The quotes aren't incidental to the story -- they are the story. The AP is reporting on the "tone" of what the president is saying. And those are the quotes they chose to prove it.
Now, I don't watch TV, so maybe Bush was rolling his eyes or had his tongue in his cheek when he spoke last week. But AP didn't tell me that.
And maybe in the middle of the press conference last week a Rovian Rumplestiltskin popped up in the Rose Garden flower bed and shrieked to the press corps, "we're pushing back." And this weekend he whispered, "we're toning down."
It's very possible that's behind the spin. White House press coverage is a bizarre business, at least it was in the '80s when I got a taste of it. If anything, from what I hear, it's gotten more twisted since then.
It would be like a big wedding ceremony, and a big reception afterward, in which two families exchange vows and toasts and dances. And all through it this group of reporters is pestering the bride with probing and leading questions about her groom's family. And finally, midway through the ceremony, they home in on something and the bride at one point says, "Well, his mom wanted me to wear the dress she got married in, but we tried it on and I'm just too small for it." And at that point the press crew clicks off its tape recorders and cameras because they all recognize they've got the story for the next day. And the headline reads, "Bride slams fat mother-in-law."
Sometimes in journalism you use your intimacy with your sources, and the off-the-record chats you have with them, to shape your coverage. For instance, I once was a cop reporter when a woman was found murdered in her home for no apparent reason. The police chief told me off the record that they were pretty sure her husband had done it and covered it up to make it look like a break-in. They were building the case against him, but it took a week or more before they formally charged him. Until then, neither the chief nor I could say in public that he was facing charges.
But based on what I knew but couldn't print, I wrote a different sort of story than I would have otherwise. It was "police continue to investigate the death of ______" rather than "killer on loose in city." If you do that often enough, you then can read other people's coverage and get a clue as to what they've been told off the record based on where they're steering the story.
But it seems to me, more and more, that the White House coverage we're getting is driven by something other than realities. Which isn't helping the national dialogue on Iraq.
I'm really interested in this, for the time being, from a very narrow perspective of how the journalism works. Imagine you could find an intelligent person who'd been in a clamshell for the last five years and feed him these two sets of quotes:
“People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq. ... I heard somebody say, `Well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position.' I totally reject that thought."
side by side with:
"Listen, patriotic is apt to disagree with the president, it doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics."
And you told him to pick which one was "fiercely attacking" and which one was "abruptly conciliatory," or whatever. I can imagine he'd be puzzled by the choice.
I'm not cherry-picking quotes. Those are the ones the news wire stories are built on. One from last week, one from Sunday/Monday. I'm not going to the press conference transcripts on the White House Web site to see the totality of what was said. The quotes aren't incidental to the story -- they are the story. The AP is reporting on the "tone" of what the president is saying. And those are the quotes they chose to prove it.
Now, I don't watch TV, so maybe Bush was rolling his eyes or had his tongue in his cheek when he spoke last week. But AP didn't tell me that.
And maybe in the middle of the press conference last week a Rovian Rumplestiltskin popped up in the Rose Garden flower bed and shrieked to the press corps, "we're pushing back." And this weekend he whispered, "we're toning down."
It's very possible that's behind the spin. White House press coverage is a bizarre business, at least it was in the '80s when I got a taste of it. If anything, from what I hear, it's gotten more twisted since then.
It would be like a big wedding ceremony, and a big reception afterward, in which two families exchange vows and toasts and dances. And all through it this group of reporters is pestering the bride with probing and leading questions about her groom's family. And finally, midway through the ceremony, they home in on something and the bride at one point says, "Well, his mom wanted me to wear the dress she got married in, but we tried it on and I'm just too small for it." And at that point the press crew clicks off its tape recorders and cameras because they all recognize they've got the story for the next day. And the headline reads, "Bride slams fat mother-in-law."
Sometimes in journalism you use your intimacy with your sources, and the off-the-record chats you have with them, to shape your coverage. For instance, I once was a cop reporter when a woman was found murdered in her home for no apparent reason. The police chief told me off the record that they were pretty sure her husband had done it and covered it up to make it look like a break-in. They were building the case against him, but it took a week or more before they formally charged him. Until then, neither the chief nor I could say in public that he was facing charges.
But based on what I knew but couldn't print, I wrote a different sort of story than I would have otherwise. It was "police continue to investigate the death of ______" rather than "killer on loose in city." If you do that often enough, you then can read other people's coverage and get a clue as to what they've been told off the record based on where they're steering the story.
But it seems to me, more and more, that the White House coverage we're getting is driven by something other than realities. Which isn't helping the national dialogue on Iraq.
