MediaWatch: November 1996

Janet Cooke Award: Money is the Root of All Media Evils

Earlier this year, journalists bashing journalists became a fad. Atlantic Monthly editor James Fallows' new book Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy led a new, liberal attack on the media: too stardom-obsessed, too enamored of power, too wealthy from lecture fees, too distant from the common people -- even too conservative on economics. On October 22, Frontline aired a documentary titled "Why Americans Hate the Press," a co-production with the far-left Center for Investigative Reporting. Correspondent and producer Stephen Talbot never really attempted to answer how people feel about the press in the hour-long program. Instead, he centered his program around Fallows arguing for the "sedate high church" of journalism, as opposed to the reporters who've lost touch while cashing in on Sunday morning "food fight" fame.

This thesis originated from Fallows -- and Bill Clinton. As Bob Woodward explained on Frontline: "Clinton makes that point in my book, that he believes that the Washington press corps is so out of touch that it is absolutely inconceivable that reporters will understand the issues that people are really dealing with in their lives, and Clinton feels a profound alienation from the Washington culture here, and I happen to agree with him."

For probing the press from the left without balancing the show with press criticism from the right, Frontline earned the Janet Cooke Award. Among the questions raised by a viewing of the program:

1. Where were the conservatives? One thing that makes many Americans, and tens of millions of conservatives, hate the press is its liberal bias, but it went absolutely unmentioned. Questions about bias surfaced in Talbot's interviews with several of the talking heads (presented in full on the PBS website), but they never made the show. With the exception of Fred Barnes (who didn't comment on bias), not a single conservative appeared. Instead, PBS presented a left-wing stable of media scolds. First and foremost came Fallows, echoed by Washington Post reporter/columnist David Broder and media reporter Howard Kurtz, and even far-left critics Christopher Hitchens and Mark Hertsgaard, whose book On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency argued the press was incredibly soft on Ronald Reagan. Curiously, instead of investigating the press in its daily work on print and television, Talbot began the show with Fallows attacking The McLaughlin Group, a PBS program, and its commercial imitators, even interspersing them with footage of professional wrestling. Said Fallows: "That is something I would like to see done away with." Broder argued: "What bothers me is the notion that journalists believe, or some journalists believe, that they can have their cake and eat it, too, that you can have all of the special privileges, access, and extraordinary freedom that you have because you are a journalist in a society that protects journalism to a greater degree than any other country in the world, and at the same time, you can be a policy advocate, you can be a public performer on the lecture circuit or on television. I think that's greedy." Kurtz added: "It's certainly true that the more journalists have become part of the affluent upper middle class, they have started to identify more with the elite in our society rather than the people who plunk down their quarters at the news stands for newspapers. I think that's a real problem."
2. Where was the evidence? Talbot decried the influences on reporters who make large sums in speaking fees from corporations, but never provided a single example of content altered by them. As Fred Barnes suggested, "I haven't ever had anybody point out to me where that's happened." PBS didn't either.  Fallows complained that corporations and trade associations expect a "subtle immunization," that before "doing you in," a reporter will say: "Oh, gee, I know old Joe from the tobacco lobby, maybe I should call him, see what he has to say." But isn't it the job of any decent reporter to include the business side of a dispute?
3. What about nonprofit groups? Talbot touted ABC's July 1994 decision to ban reporter speaking conflicts: "To avoid these potential and embarrassing conflicts of interest, ABC imposed a new policy banning speeches to lobbying groups by its reporters." But the rule doesn't apply to nonprofit advocacy groups. For example, in May 1994, ABC's Carole Simpson hosted a fundraiser for the liberal NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Why is it a conflict of interest to speak to the tobacco lobby but not to raise money for liberal lobbies like the NAACP? ABC told us its policy covered "groups with a political purpose," which they felt didn't include the NAACP. PBS didn't bring this up.
4. What does the revolving door prove? Talbot decried the revolving door between journalism and politics, focusing on famous revolvers like Tim Russert and David Gergen. But he failed to mention what the revolving door proves. For years, MediaWatch has documented how almost four times as many liberals and Democrats have revolved into the media as have conservatives or Republicans, which should have raised a question about whether liberal bias results.
5. Isn't this hypocrisy? Except for Woodward, who Talbot interviewed and then counted on Hertsgaard to bash as an insider, Talbot never challenged his stable of liberal critics. Fallows insisted he despises buckraking revolving-door journalism, but keeps David Gergen at U.S. News. Broder deplored reporters as "policy advocates," but for many years has been a reporter and a columnist. Kurtz proclaimed reporters sympathize with politicians rather than the public, yet Kurtz has regularly complained about Bill Clinton's supposed maltreatment at the hands of reporters, talk show hosts, and comedians. When MediaWatch called the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco for comment, Talbot was in Italy. CIR executive Sharon Tiller, listed as a producer on the Frontline program, did not return phone calls. Perhaps the most interesting sub-theme of the show is how a PBS program could point out media buckrakers like Cokie Roberts (of NPR), Steve Roberts (a PBS Washington Week in Review regular), and David Gergen (of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer), but didn't suggest that PBS is a breeding ground for buckraking -- that the network spawned out of a contempt for commercialism is now awash in profiteering opportunities for those who are chosen to grace its airwaves. The worse hypocrisy of all belongs to Frontline itself. It deplored reporters being too close to power, but after years of leveling discredited allegations at the Reagan and Bush administrations, it hasn't done a single investigative program on the Clintons in four years.

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