[NYTr] Media: Cautionary Tale In Journalism History

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Credo Action - Dec 11, 2007
http://action.credomobile.com/sirota/2007/12/peter_beinart_as_cautionary_ta.html

Peter Beinart As Cautionary Tale in Journalism History

By David Sirota

Just eight months ago, PBS's Bill Moyers aired perhaps the single most
devastating indictment of the Washington press corps that I have ever
seen. In his documentary, which looked at how the media cheered on
President Bush's push for a war with Iraq, Moyers interviewed one of
the key cheerleaders - then-New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Moyers
asked Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert"
in the lead up to war? Beinart said that though he had never been to
Iraq, he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asked what
kind of "political journalism" and reporting Beinart did to make sure
his pro-war cheerleading was sound? Beinart's answer was the stuff of
journalism infamy:

    "Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading
the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat
reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not
doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of
reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were
saying."

This is the kind of quote that your journalism professor puts on the
board during your freshman year as an example of all that is wrong with
the reporting today. And you might think that after such an utterly
humiliating admission, Beinart would change his ways, and do, ya know,
real reporting the next time he opens his mouth about Iraq.

But you would be wrong.

In his latest Washington Post column, Beinart claims that "the war has
receded" as a priority for Americans. As proof, he cites himself
reading a live-blog from a New York Times reporter covering a
Democratic presidential debate. I kid you not. Here is Beinart's lead
"proving" his assertion that "the war has receded" as a priority:

    Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged
the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion
bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time,
then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver's licenses; 8:55,
Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night's end she had 17 entries
totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn't typed "Iraq" once.

As the Atlantic Monthly's Matt Yglesias says, "Basically, the evidence
for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate
questioning process don't want to talk about the war." In other words,
just like he pushed America to war based on "reading the statements and
the things that people said" and not actual reporting, he is trying to
downplay the Iraq War as a major issue by simply reading the punditry
of other Washington reporters, rather than looking at the actual facts.

It's no wonder why he has chosen to do this: The actual facts blow his
entire thesis about the Iraq war "receding" to smithereens. As Editor &
Publisher reports, "a new Gallup poll reveals that when 'asked which
issues will be most important in determining their vote for president
in next year's election, Americans by a wide margin say the war in
Iraq, with more than one in three mentioning the war.'"

What's really offensive about Beinart's behavior is as much his
desperate propagandizing about the war he helped push America into as
his disregard for any semblance of intellectual honesty. This is not
some casual error here - this is a person who was quite literally
embarrassed on national television just a few months ago and is now
employing exactly the behavior he originally was embarrassed for - as
if journalistic integrity and ethics are just nuisances to be ignored.
Most normal people would react to getting factually crushed on
television by sitting back and thinking about how to avoid such
egregiously irresponsible behavior in the future. Not folks in D.C.
like Beinart - it's full-speed ahead for them.

Equally appalling (though, frankly, not shocking) is the fact that the
Washington Post continues to publish him, and that for all his
dishonesty, he has been rewarded with a perch at the Council on Foreign
Relations. Apparently in Washington, helping push America into the
worst foreign relations disaster in contemporary history and then
continuing to lie about that disaster is a resume builder, rather than
a blemish. Yes, you actually get a bigger platform and get paid more
and get a cushier job in D.C. the more inaccurate and deliberately off
the mark you are willing to be.

The Peter Beinart Story is not troubling because this one insignificant
warmonger continues to live the good life in D.C. It is deeply
disturbing for what it says about the sorry state of the media's role
as a check and balance on power. The Peter Beinart Story is,
pound-for-pound, the saddest, sickest commentary of all on a Washington
media culture whose insularity has totally divorced it from even the
most basic tenets of journalism. And that's a tragedy for those of us
outside of Washington, living in the reality-based community.