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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Political Pulse: Super-Charged Electorate (June 8, 2004) Back in 2000, voters didn't get energized until after the election. This year, the opposite is true. By William Schneider. Social Studies: In Iraq, Don't Cut And Run. Cut and Don't Run. (June 8, 2004) The biggest mistake America could make in Iraq would be not to try for democracy there. The second-biggest mistake might be to try too hard. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Has Bush Learned Anything From His Mistakes? (June 3, 2004) President Bush comes off more and more as an ideologue bereft of viable ideas, a man impervious to the lessons of experience and uninterested in thoughtful reflection. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Wealth of Nations: The War in Iraq and the Wisdom of Hindsight (June 3, 2004) Advocates of the war in Iraq owe the people they debated before the war an honest answer to the question, "So, now do you admit that you were wrong?" By Clive Crook. Media: Radio Free America (June 3, 2004) The people behind satellite radio understand the dreadful quality of traditional commercial radio. By William Powers. Political Pulse: Aggressive Courtship (June 3, 2004) The allegiance of Jewish voters to the Democratic Party will be put to the test in the presidential race. By William Schneider. More from National Journal. |
Media 
It Pays to Be Wrong
The news business only pretends to be wary of byline hounds known to sometimes play it fast and loose. by William Powers ..... Media scandals are now so common, they're part of the rhythm of American life. Wake up, shower, brush teeth, check in on the news trade's latest disaster. If Norman Rockwell were still alive, he'd give us a heartwarming scene of a wholesome family huddled close round the morning paper, reading aloud the latest New York Times correction. Like all rituals, these dramas follow a familiar script. In the case of The Times' Iraq war errors, which the paper finally acknowledged last week, we are now in the last act, aka Lessons Learned. This is when Wise Observers from all corners of the media landscape clear their throats in unison and agree that This Must Never Happen Again. Yet it always does. Why? Theories abound. It's all about personality. It's about competition. It's about the Internet. It's about broad moral decay. And so on. There's one theory I rarely see mentioned anywhere, though it arguably trumps all the others and explains why these scandals keep happening and are not going away in this lifetime. It's simply this: The modern media have an insatiable need for exactly the kind of work that the news scandals are all about—stories that are a bit suspect, tendentious, vaguely too good (or bad) to be true. This hunger is not conscious, and you'll be hard-pressed to find reporters or editors who'll tell you that this is what they seek. In fact, whenever a media scandal breaks, it's other journalists who run around in a collective panic, wondering how this could possibly be happening again. Here's how. The news business often rewards people who get the story not quite right—reporters who allow errors of fact, judgment, and emphasis to subtly shape their work. I say "subtly" in order to make a distinction. I'm not talking now about the outright liars and fabricators; they are monstrous caricatures of a more common and insidious type. I'm talking about some of the smartest, hardest-working people in the news business, individuals who have a record of basically getting things right—and, in many cases, doing so before anyone else. As it happens, some of this breed have an inborn knack for delivering the news in a way that's especially magnetic and, well, newsy. They produce the stories that leap out of the pack, get people talking, have an impact, sell papers, win prizes. But the magnetism of these stories is often rooted in their flaws—flaws of fact, judgment, and emphasis. The news business pretends to be wary of these types, the aggressive byline hounds known to sometimes play it fast and loose. But we go back to them again and again, like a junkie. The New York Times went back again and again to reporter Judith Miller, who got the WMD story so wrong. Consider two news stories on the same hypothetical subject: a new scientific study concluding there may be life on the planet Pluto. Wild news, no? Journalist A produces a balanced report on the study, a story that works hard to avoid easy simplification and includes every shade of opinion on the big Pluto question—black, white, and (especially) gray. The story runs on page 9, under the headline, "Scientists Differ on Pluto Claim." Journalist B does similar reporting, but in writing his piece, he winds up focusing on several prominent scientists who are particularly impressed with the Pluto claim. Better still, they are impressed in a memorable, quoteworthy way, with one of them saying that if the claim is verified, "this could bring a fundamental change to our understanding of all existence." Though Reporter B is aware of opposing views in the scientific community, he decides the news lies with this pro-life (as it were) group, and he plays them up in the story while playing down the doubters. His story appears on the front page with the headline "Pluto Evidence Stuns Scientific Community; 'A Fundamental Change to Our Understanding of Existence.' " Which story would you read? Which would get people talking? The second story draws angry letters from some scientists who claim to have been quoted out of context; one complains loudly that cutting the conditional "could" from his quotation about "fundamental change" had altered the meaning of what he said. The reporter is invited onto various national TV shows, where, always smooth and facile, he defends himself beautifully. A book contract is announced, and a few months later, he's promoted to a more prominent beat. Inside the news business, there's a grudging respect for this sort of figure. They may play it fast and loose, but damn, they get ahead. And there's a sense, rarely articulated but widely felt, that this is the surest way to the profession's richest rewards. Every time a news scandal breaks, media executives bow low to the values that the profession supposedly holds dear—accuracy, fairness, and all the rest. The New York Times did so last week, in an editors' note on the Iraq mistakes that, given the history and culture of that paper, was pretty impressive. But in our hearts, we all know it's a different collection of values that sets the news world on fire. Fairness and balance have page 17 written all over them. As The Times' public editor, Daniel Okrent, put it in his column last Sunday, "There are few things more maligned in newsroom culture than the 'on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand' story, with its exquisitely delicate (and often soporific) balancing. There are few things more greedily desired than a byline on page 1." The gunslingers live on page 1. And they're not going away.
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. 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 © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. |
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