Letters to the Editor
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Why Washington Post stopped telling readers what the truth is...
Glenn--
In today's post, you have two great sections taken out of Bill Moyers' wonderful documentary on why the media got the run-up to the war in Iraq so dreadfully wrong. Here's another excellent part of that documentary that you might want to keep in your quiver.
Walter Pincus, a very experienced reporter at the Post, talks about when and why the Washington Post gave up determining the facts for themselves and telling their readers what they found out. (Shockingly enough, happened back when the Right Wing first came onto the national scene!) Basically: "we had a lot of readers complain that we were being mean to poor Uncle Ronnie Reagan -- so we stopped finding out what the truth was and stopped reporting it to our readers. Our new method became, if the Democrats don't pipe up and give "their side" of things (=the truth), then we just repeat the lies of the Republicans." (My summary of the gist of what he says.)
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WALTER PINCUS: More and more, in the media, become, I think, common carriers of Administration statements, and critics of the Administration. And we've sort of given up being independent on our own.
ANNOUNCER (3/6/1981): Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.
WALTER PINCUS: We used to do at the Post something called truth squading. President would make a speech. We used to do it with Ronald Reagan the first five or six months because he would make so many factual errors, particularly in his press conference.
PRESIDENT REAGAN (3/6/1981): From 10 thousand to 60 thousand dollars a year...
WALTER PINCUS: And after two or three weeks of it, the public at large, would say, "Why don't you leave the man alone? He's trying to be honest. He makes mistakes. So what?" and we stopped doing it.
BILL MOYERS: You stopped being the truth squad.
WALTER PINCUS: We stopped truth-squading every sort of press conference, or truth squading. And we left it then to the Democrats. In other words, it's up to the Democrats to catch people, not us.
BILL MOYERS: So if the democrats challenged a statement from the President, you could quote both sides.
WALTER PINCUS: We then quote both sides. Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: Now, that's called objectivity by many standards isn't it?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, that's objectivity if you think there are only two sides. And if you're not interested in the facts. And the facts are separate from, you know, what one side says about the other.