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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Political Pulse: Preserving the Road Map (June 4, 2003) Empowering the new Palestinian government may be the only way Israel can protect itself. By William Schneider. Wealth of Nations: The Strong-Dollar Policy: Barking at the Moon (June 4, 2003) This administration has no policy on the dollar, and is right to have no policy on the dollar. By Clive Crook. Media: Too, Too Teresa (May 27, 2003) Teresa Heinz Kerry isn't just overshadowing her husband, she's becoming the story of the 2004 campaign. By William Powers. Legal Affairs: The Judicial Selection Wars: How a Truce Could Be Fashioned (May 27, 2003) President Bush should pledge not to alter the court's balance. Democrats should agree to stop the filibusters. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: 'Security' Redefined (May 27, 2003) The latest terror attacks show that war in Iraq was a dangerous diversion, Democrats say. By William Schneider. Social Studies: After Iraq, the Left Has a New Agenda: Contain America First (May 27, 2003) Neocons say America should always be free to act alone. Neoleftists say it should never be free to act alone. By Jonathan Rauch. More from National Journal. |
Media 
Grinding AwayPublishers of books by shameless media manipulators should be concerned about their own reputations by William Powers ..... Spring has sprung in the big world beyond America's newsrooms, but the weather inside is harsh and bitter. It's tough for the hardworking members of the information tribe to enjoy life when their own business, which is supposed to be all about truth, suddenly seems to be all about lies, narcissism, and the cold-eyed sociopathy of ambition. On one level there's the basic horror of what's happened. Of Jayson Blair, who took one of the world's great media outlets for a ride and, by his own account, not only enjoyed it but viewed his baroque dishonesty as a brilliant kind of therapy. He was working out his anger, punishing the "snake pit"—which is what he calls the organization he had come to despise, The New York Times. And, really, who better to undermine a snake pit than a higher order of snake? We've read and wept, too, about that other canny conniver, Stephen Glass, who, rather than do the decent thing at the time he was caught, rather than apologize for betraying the colleagues he bamboozled at The New Republic (including me) and countless readers, huddled with his lawyer, went to ground for several years, and had extensive therapy of his own. Having gotten in touch with his inner financial options, he emerged remade, as a novelist. When you think about it, Glass is a modern inversion of Pinocchio, who began life as a wooden doll that couldn't stop lying and learned through hard experience how to be a real boy. Glass seems to be on precisely the opposite journey, from a flesh-and-blood young man who happened to be a liar to the puppet of a big-time publisher that's only too happy to vend his wooden prose, if it might make a buck. And that's the real fear about these shameless two and the other media miscreants who are busting out all over these days. Journalists are outraged and depressed not just at what's happened, but also at what these stories seem to say about the values guiding the profession and the broader culture. Most troubling of all is the prospect that these people might make big bucks from their notoriety, giving diabolic new meaning to the phrase "failing upward." In the last few weeks, thinking journalists everywhere have had at least one dark moment where they saw the latest Blair/Glass coverage and asked themselves, "Is this how you succeed, become a media star in 21st-century America?" Thus, the idea that Blair might follow in Glass's footsteps and get a nice publishing deal of his own—not to mention a Jayson-the-Superhero movie—has been obsessively covered for more than a week, and obsessively devoured inside the club. And outside, too. One day this week, the top news story offered by AOL on its welcome page, a page viewed every day by tens of millions of nonjournalists, was about Blair's book proposal, in which he reportedly portrays himself as a victim. Before honest hacks start jumping in front of trains, let's take a breath and note a few salient points about these stories, and what really happens to those who break the rules of this still-honorable game. First, there's a widely held assumption that because we're hearing more lately about liars and plagiarists, there must be more lying and plagiarism going on. It's possible this is true, and there is something to the argument that since technology has made it easier to lie and steal—thanks particularly to the instant availability of other people's work on Web databases—maybe more people are doing it. But there's a flip side: The same technology that the Glasses and Blairs of this world use to create fake journalism is also being used to catch and punish them. Maybe it's not that there's more lying, but more vigilance about lying. Alarmists think technology is eroding journalistic standards, but in another way technology is linking us all together in a new kind of community, a community that turns out to have exacting standards and is avid to enforce them. Which leads us to a second false assumption: that the most shameless media manipulators now thrive and prosper in spite of, and thanks to, their crimes—that they're getting away with it. In fact, the opposite is happening. When Glass's exploitative novel came out, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, wasn't celebrated and admired for its brilliance, but reviled. In a Washington Post book review, Chris Lehmann wrote that the company had brought out the book "to its considerable shame." Later, when the New York Observer asked publishing honchos if they would now buy the Blair book, most recoiled. The headline on the AOL story: "No Book Deal for Fired Writer, Publishers Wary of 'Scoundrel.' " "Shame" and "scoundrel" are very old-fashioned words. And it turns out a very old-fashioned bromide, the one that says the wheels of justice grind slow, "but they grind exceedingly fine," is still on point. This week, the scandal claimed another journalist, Pulitzer-winning Timesman Rick Bragg, who received a two-week suspension for not crediting a freelancer whose work he'd used, and later resigned. Based on early reports, Bragg doesn't appear to be even remotely another Blair—and if the facts bear this out, he will not be treated that way. The wheels grind in precise proportion to the enormity of the offense. The punishment, for individuals and the outlets that employ them, is lost reputation and respect, intangibles that take years to acquire and that, once lost, no amount of money can buy back. Nothing, not a huge best-seller, not a blockbuster movie—in fact, least of all those things—can stop those lovely wheels from turning.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. |
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