Letters to the Editor
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The Aussie (print) press lacks the requisite degree of deference, as well
H/T Raw Story for the link
http://tinyurl.com/2tpvck
Check this story from the Sydney Herald. 9/11 is the topic.
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A Source is a Source, Of Course Of Course
I'm a reporter myself, and of course I frequently interview sources. If a source says mid-interview "and this is off the record," I honor it. It's just the decent thing to do. It's not being acquiescent or subservient. It's being fair; it's being a gentleman.
It's also in my own interest. People don't have to talk to me; if they do, I'm not going to make them regret it and avoid me from then on. If prospective sources learn that a particular reporter (or, worse, all reporters) may burn them by treating every interaction as presumptively on the record, then those sources will of course go out of their way to avoid the press. Who wouldn't?
What Greenwald fails to remember is that the sources who talk to Russert on the phone (or via e-mail) don't have to talk to him either. Russert's job is to get high-powered people into that guest chair once a week. In that chair, EVERYTHING is on the record and on the air. It's in Russert's interest to give a little in his phone conversations if it means making sources comfortable enough to come onto his program and sit through his questioning. If I were him, I'd do the same thing. Otherwise, you might get one incendiary phone quote, but that's it.
Gerri Peev got herself into the spotlight for a brief moment. But I'd be surprised if anyone else in politics talks to her for a long time.
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Just curious, for whom?
I'm a reporter myself,... --WashDCMan
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Meh
casual_observer, I watch Democracy Now! almost daily (streaming, as we haven't got a TV), and while I respect the body of Goodman's work, I've also seen her toss softballs with the best of them when she's got someone on her show with whom she agrees ideologically.
She has shown courage and tenacity in taking on issues that no other media outlet will take on, and I do honour and respect her for that. More Amy Goodmans would obviously be better than more Tucker Carlsons. But, again, PBS is almost as marginal an outlet as the blogs.
I mean, I appreciate your suggestion, and I suspect that there's not one simple answer to my question, and that we're not going to figure it out in one comments string
I just think we need -- desperately -- revolutionary change in our media, and I don't even know how to start bring that about. I don't know what barricades Glenn could send adnoto to storm.
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WashDCMan
And there you have it, in a nutshell. Access is king, journalists are powerless, and in the world of political reportage, it is always and without exception a sellers market.
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WashDCMan
So: you getting your story on the subject's terms is more important that your obligations to your craft (after reading you I hesitate to call it a profession, which implies standards). You are worried no one will talk to you if they may be held to account. What kind of journalism do you practice?
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dear glenn -
thank you for your excellent writing but something is really bothering me: Are you really sure that "the fuel of American journalism is protecting, rather than exposing, the secrets of the powerful?
If this would be true - why do I know so much more about the most powerful Americans than about people in my own family?
- Okay - some of my family members are Germans - and they much rather die then tell you - they once had a drinking problem - or they like to make friends in airport bathrooms but somehow I know all of these disturbing details about these "powerful" Americans and with the most powerful of them all with "George" I am so "intimate" I could write his biography.
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WashDCman
Thank you for demonstrating so perfectly well what Glenn is talking about.
Russert's job is to get high-powered people into that guest chair once a week. In that chair, EVERYTHING is on the record and on the air. It's in Russert's interest to give a little in his phone conversations if it means making sources comfortable enough to come onto his program and sit through his questioning. If I were him, I'd do the same thing.
Consider the implications of what you said here. Tim has to presume all things said to him are off the record, in order to get statements on the record. This is like telling a hunter, "You can't shoot that deer, because then the other deer will all run away and I won't be able to shoot them."
Which makes me wonder, what does this primacy of Tim's TV show over all other things Tim does as a journalist say about the state of journalism? Clearly, according to your comment, the most important thing here is for Tim to have access to important people so that he can get them on his TV show. To what effect? Other than making his interview subjects temporarily uncomfortable, what grand piece of news has Tim Russert made on the air during his show?
Tim Russert, for all of his access and fame, has in fact made less actual news than our best, lesser-known investigative journalists that are more interested in getting information out to the public than in attempting to create "gotcha" moments on TV with a person's past quotes.
Thanks again for demonstrating so clearly what we're talking about.
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@elephantman
It's not really an anti thing at all. It is supposed to be an adversarial system with the media representing the side of the public interest against the interests of power. This is the loss many here have been stating.
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@WashDCMan
(Incidentally, I'm glad DCLaw1 turned up to effectively rebut the fallacious assertions that Glenn is commenting on the merits or significance of the "monster" quote; the point is obviously that dweeb snot Carlson's expression of the corporate media ethos [pardon the oxymoron] of collusory deference to those in power.)
By implying that Gerri Peev committed a self-serving faux pas that will give her a moment of celebrity or fame, but at the expense of burning the crucial bridge of comity that supports both the reporter and his subject, you've only reaffirmed that the fundamental principle followed by conventional (Amerikan) "journalists" is to know which side their bread is buttered on.