The network has come a long way since Edward R. Murrow. From the time William S. Paley backed his newspeople in unmasking Sen. Joe McCarthy to the present day when its lawyers are insulting Dan Rather in court filings for trying to nail George W. Bush's lies about his National Guard service, CBS has been in a downward spiral as steep as the ratings plunge of its nightly news.
In the new issue of New York Magazine, Rather vents his dismay over being blamed for an error in a story that was essentially right and booted out of a job he held with distinction for 24 years after being the network's lead reporter in exposing Nixon and Watergate.
Although legend rightly immortalizes Woodward and Bernstein for their Washington Post coverage leading to Nixon's downfall, CBS News was the only other media outlet that stayed with the story during a time when others held back, and it was Rather who did most of the reporting.
When he recently brought suit to vindicate himself from what Ted Koppel called the "travesty" of his firing for "a story that was much more correct than incorrect," CBS lawyers filed a contemptuous response in court papers, citing it as "a regrettable attempt" by him "to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights."
At the risk of looking like the loony anchorman in "Network" shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more," Rather is ending his public life with the signoff he used for his broadcasts: "Courage."
He has always had more than his share of that and deserves the respect that a now whorish network is trying to take away from him.
Showing posts with label Woodward and Bernstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Woodward and Bernstein. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Case for Clobbering Candidates
Talk about “media bias” has a pornographic appeal for politicians and bloggers. Revealing MSM hypocrisy is as irresistible as finding Sen. Vitter on the D.C. Madam’s phone records.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Reality Check for Nixon's Lying Library
Congressmen who are frustrated by current White House stonewalling may want to look at how long it has taken to get out the truth about our 37th President.
This Wednesday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will re-open after being closed for months to tear out the Watergate Gallery, which for 17 years has been giving visitors a fictionalized version of events that led to his resignation--a “coup” led by his enemies with Woodward and Bernstein “offering bribes” to help distort their coverage.
In March, workers roped off the exhibits and began to destroy the cabinets and plexiglass-sandwiched documents with hammers, crowbars and electric saws.
In 1990, the Library had opened with ceremonies attended by three Republican presidents--Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. What nobody seemed to notice was that Nixon had rewritten Watergate history, edited the crucial Oval Office tapes and omitted any mention of the dirty tricks, break-ins and other illegal activities that led to his impeachment and resignation.
This Alice-in-Wonderland version of Watergate was seen by almost three million visitors before the library, museum and Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California were transferred to the National Archives this year, presumably for taxpayers to take over expenses that had previously been underwritten by private donors.
The new federal director ordered demolition of what one Nixon scholar called "another Southern California theme park" with “a level of reality only slightly better than Disneyland" and replace it with what he tactfully describes as less of “a shrine.”
The library will now have 78,000 pages of previously withheld papers and 800 hours of tapes as well as copies of “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein in the book store.
One thing that won’t change is that the reproduced White House East Room will still be available “for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.”
This Wednesday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will re-open after being closed for months to tear out the Watergate Gallery, which for 17 years has been giving visitors a fictionalized version of events that led to his resignation--a “coup” led by his enemies with Woodward and Bernstein “offering bribes” to help distort their coverage.
In March, workers roped off the exhibits and began to destroy the cabinets and plexiglass-sandwiched documents with hammers, crowbars and electric saws.
In 1990, the Library had opened with ceremonies attended by three Republican presidents--Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. What nobody seemed to notice was that Nixon had rewritten Watergate history, edited the crucial Oval Office tapes and omitted any mention of the dirty tricks, break-ins and other illegal activities that led to his impeachment and resignation.
This Alice-in-Wonderland version of Watergate was seen by almost three million visitors before the library, museum and Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California were transferred to the National Archives this year, presumably for taxpayers to take over expenses that had previously been underwritten by private donors.
The new federal director ordered demolition of what one Nixon scholar called "another Southern California theme park" with “a level of reality only slightly better than Disneyland" and replace it with what he tactfully describes as less of “a shrine.”
The library will now have 78,000 pages of previously withheld papers and 800 hours of tapes as well as copies of “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein in the book store.
One thing that won’t change is that the reproduced White House East Room will still be available “for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.”
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