It seems that President Bush’s string of election victories, begun with the Afghani elections, continues in Germany, if John Fund at WSJ Opinionjournal is correct. I wonder if the rest of Europe is paying attention.
I was listening to Laura Ingraham on the drive to work this morning, as is my wont, and she was talking to Howard Fineman, Deputy Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for Newsweek, regarding the Kuran Kurfuffle and he made an interesting comment about Michael Isikoff, the writer of the brief piece in question and the man inexplicably charged with cleaning up the mess with the able help of Evan Thomas.
Please forgive what paraphrasing may exist as I don’t have a transcript, and I am relying on my increasingly faulty reporter’s memory.
“I can assure you that Mike has no idealogical agenda other than making life difficult for whoever is in power,” Howard Fineman, Laura Ingraham 5/23/05 radio program.
While Fineman admitted that a blind-spot exists in the MSM coverage of the military because few reporters have any experience or acquaintances with experience in the military, but here he reveals a blind-spot about the role and duty of journalism [hmm... a bit of a non-sequitor there, but I'll leave it -ed.] He doesn’t seem to understand that the role of the journalist is not, or rather shouldn’t be, “speaking truth to power;” it is, or should be, reporting the facts, in appropriate context, in a timely and newsworthy manner. By “newsworthy,” I mean that some stories, while true and extant, don’t merit publication because they are so common as to be assumed or are simply unnecessary gadfly-ism. “Making life difficult for those in power” falls into the latter category. Not every story is Watergate and not every war is Viet Nam. The inimitable James Taranto ably describes such adversarial journalism here, here, here and the follies it brings here.
If your entire ideology consists of antagonizing those in power (a common pasttime when those in power are Republicans), then you can’t help but introduce bias by your story selection, article tone and editorial review. If all Isikoff wants to do is make the Administration in power squirm, he is going to be a little quick on the trigger to fire off a story from a trusted but anonymous source with an axe to grind against those in power. This is how stories like the Texas Air National Guard memos and the Koran flushing, the leaked Election Day raw exit poll data and the “missing” Iraqi weapons stores (and where did that story go, I wonder?) got released too early and came back to bite the reporters in the ass.
Patience, circumspection and accuracy should be the motto of any reputable news organization, not “You heard it here first!” and “Late-Breaking Exclusive!”
So much for a quick note. This has been your Monday MediaCritique… as good a choice for recurring Monday category as any I suppose.