Honor system no longer extant
Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, August 3, 2005

If there’s anything you’ll never read in this column, it’s a categorical defense of the news media. One way or another, my last three books have been about the terrible harm done to individuals and the country by slipshod and dishonest reporting. Among those criticized most vigorously have been some of the major so-called liberal news organizations—broadcast and print. Here’s how I put it in a 2003 Harper’s review of Eric Alterman’s fine book, "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News":" ‘Bias,’ left or right, isn’t an adequate word for what’s taken place over the last decade or thereabouts. Claiming the moral authority of a code of professional ethics it idealizes in the abstract but repudiates in practice, today’s Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group whose behavior it purports to monitor. "I wouldn’t stipulate a golden age of American journalism, but I would argue that TV fame and money have become big corrupting factors. Celebrity journalists and sleazy tabloid coverage have existed since newspapers began during the 18 th century. But the American press used to be regulated by an informal but fairly effective honor system. Now it runs on a star system not unlike Hollywood’s. Once a degree of professional visibility is achieved, it’s hard to lose.

I’d cite currently imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller as Exhibit A. Her bungled" exclusives" on Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction did as much to drive the U.S. to war as the Bush administration’s fanciful geopolitical imagineers. If she were a sports reporter, she’d have been laughed out of the profession. Baseball fans demand that you get the scores right.

But you know what? I also know of crooked cops, disbarred lawyers, drug addicted physicians, child-molesting teachers, skirt-chasing preachers, scientists who fudge data, corporate execs who pad profits, ballplayers who bulk up on steroids—well, you get the point. If there’s a politician alive who’s never lied, bronze him fast before somebody gets a photo of his hand in the till.

Anyway, I recently wrote a column about the GOP media machine’s domination of Washington. "Outfits like FOX News, The Washington Times and Wall Street Journal editorial page... serve as propaganda organs of the Republican National Committee," it said. I knew that would annoy some people, because one of contemporary conservatism’s articles of faith is that, although the GOP controls all three branches of government, it is constantly being picked on, boo-hoo.

Sure enough, the letters and e-mails came rolling in. What really chapped some readers was my point that the Democrats have no equivalent apparatus. One guy wanted to know if I’d ever heard of "ABC... CBS, CNN, NBC, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post." Actually, yes, as the sentence following the one he quoted mentioned the last two newspapers’ role in touting Iraq’s WMD.

But it wasn’t the fellow’s poor logic that struck me. It was reading the same complaint in virtually the same words from a dozen readers. When that happens, you know you’re dealing with recycled propaganda, so I Googled the list of alleged Democratic media outlets exactly as he’d presented it. I got almost 100 hits, most traceable to a right-wing Washington outfit called the Media Research Center, which exists to bully journalists who stray from the GOP party line, often through the dark art of selective misquotation. My favorite was when MRC honcho Brent Bozell made the TV talk show circuit claiming that then-New York Times editor Howell Raines had shown contempt for Real Americans by writing that Ronald Reagan "couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it."

Bob Somerby at dailyhowler.com tracked down the quote. Turns out it came from a book Raines wrote about fishing. He was quoting a Camp David fishing guide. The guide was talking not about Reagan’s brain power but about his lack of interest in tying trout flies.

Does anybody believe someone would make that kind of "mistake" accidentally?

Meanwhile, if the news organizations on MRC’s laundry list owe fealty to the Democratic Party, they’ve an odd way of showing it. All of the above pushed the phony Whitewater scandal for years. They played Bill Clinton’s sexual sins bigger than the invasion of Normandy. Their coverage of the 2000 election clearly favored George W. Bush, and their failure to effectively expose the Swift Boat dirty tricksters probably decided the 2004 election. Their collective performance during the run-up to the Iraq war was a national disgrace. Otherwise, yeah, they’re more "liberal" than Rush Limbaugh. But then, that’s how the fundamentalist mind works in religion and politics: You’re either with them 100 percent or you’re the enemy. In that regard, no self respecting press organization can be anything but "liberal" in the sense of sharing a post-enlightenment world view that distinguishes between fact and belief. And facts, see, are the enemy of dogma.

Link http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Editorial&storyid=123814

Lily Tomlin said it best. "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up."