White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

‘Whacking the Cut’: A Different View of the BBC Crisis

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The BBC has fallen on its sword. The director general has resigned and so has the head of news over the splicing of tape of President Donald Trump’s rambling speech on Jan. 6, 2021, which preceded the sacking of the Capitol.

The editor and the technician who did the deed for the esteemed BBC program “Panorama” haven’t been publicly identified.

Agreed, they shouldn’t have done what they did. But was there malice?

Journalism is a business of serial judgment. It is replete with mistakes — things that we who practice the craft wish we hadn’t done.

I have worked as an editor in film, with tape and on newspapers, and I have seen how the paranoia of politicians can cast a whole news organization as a biased enemy when that wasn’t the intent.

Before a single sentence or an article appears in a newspaper or a video appears on television, dozens of judgments have been made — not by teams of academics or by ethicists or by juries, but by individuals responding to time pressure and what they judge to be newsworthy.

The unsaid pressure to keep it interesting, to have news worth something, is always there. The reader has to be kept reading or the viewer watching.

After something is published or broadcast, it can be beacon-clear what should have been done or corrected, but in the moment, those defects are opaque.

Let me take you behind the veil.

It is a hot night in 1972. There is a presidential election brewing and among those running for the Democratic nomination is Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the well-known Democratic senator from the state of Washington.

I am working in the composing room of The Washington Post as the editor in charge of liaising between the printers and the editors. The job is sometimes called a stone editor after the “stone,” big metal tables that held the pages and where the newspaper was assembled in the days of hot type.

It was a busy news night, and it was when David Broder was the political reporter without rival. He was industrious and thorough, dedicated and prolific. As the night wore on, Broder would often add new stuff to his story, and it would grow in length.

In desperation when things got tough and deadlines were pressing, we would cut back the size of the photos, which had run in the first edition. The editor on duty would just ask the printers to do this: It was known as “whacking the cut.”

In short, the photo would be reduced in size by cutting it down physically. The engraving would be put in a guillotine and some of it would be cut off, whacked.

That night, we had a large photo of Jackson addressing a large crowd.

But as the night wore on and different editions and mini editions, known as replates, were assembled, I ordered the cut whacked and whacked again. The result was that by the time the main edition went to press, the good senator was talking to a much smaller audience — although it did suggest that many more were there but not seen.

Jackson thought this was a deliberate bias by The Post to suggest that he couldn’t draw a large audience, and he called the legendary editor Ben Bradlee.

Bradlee asked the national editor, Ben Bagdikian, who was to become an authority on newspaper ethics, what happened. When they came to me, I explained how we trimmed the pictures.

While Bradlee was amused, Bagdikian added it to his concern about newspaper ethics.

Journalism is executed by individuals under pressure. It is a business of multiple judgments made sequentially, often without a lot of contemplation.

I once worked at the BBC in London, and the same pressures were present. I was scriptwriter and editor on the evening news. You made decisions all the time: This frame in, those 20 frames out. An outsider might imagine prejudice and foul intent in the way one clip was used and others were not.

In the news trade, judgments trip you up, but judgment is essential. Later the judge is judged, as at the BBC.

Old Journalism Is Coming in Shiny New Wrappers

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If you know what is going on in Gaza, it is because a journalist told you.

If you know Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest comment about autism, it is because a journalist told you.

If you know that there was a tsunami off the coast of Indonesia, it is because a journalist told you.

If you know that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are planning to marry, it is because a journalist told you — in print, over the air or on the web.

Yet when “the media” is discussed, you would think that what is essential isn’t journalism, but rather the means of delivery. The death of newspapers is high on the woeful list.

I am a newspaperman through and through. Although I have been involved, often simultaneously, with broadcasting, my heart and soul are in newspapers.

I first set foot in a newsroom when I was 14 — and I left part of me there.

I learned a lot about hot type in my youth, and I love the mechanics of newspapers. At The Washington Post, where I had a roving assignment, I often worked on “the stone,” where the type was put in the pages by artisans of extraordinary skill.

But that has gone. Hot type is history. If you want to savor it, tour the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Sadly, I must confess that no printed newspaper is delivered to my home every day. I subscribe to the digital versions of four newspapers, four magazines and several online-only outlets, and I suffer jabs of guilt when I sit before a computer screen.

Nearly all major newspapers and many smaller ones have online editions. The largest ones are grabbing much of the subscription money.

That is a repeat of what happened in big cities toward the end of the golden days of words printed on paper: The winners took all.

The New York Times drove out the Herald Tribune. The Washington Post drove out The Washington Star and The Washington Daily News.

In the case of printed newspapers, those with just a slightly larger circulation corralled all the advertising. Today’s chances are that those with a greater offering will drive out those with a robust offering, but not as dominant as, say, The Times.

Big newspapers have adopted the paywall as the model for the future, and others have had to follow. It will be a pity if that prevails.

A better model would be a pay-to-read arrangement where you join a collective such as Visa or MasterCard and pay for what you want to read. That would provide a stable future for journalism and enable much of the innovation that is going on to be on a sound financial footing.

There is innovation aplenty in how the precious commodity, journalism, is brought to you.

The magazines have morphed into something more: They have become daily newspapers with their emailed editions. The New Yorker, The Economist, The Atlantic and The Spectator have taken this path, among others. Even Vanity Fair has an emailed edition.

Additionally, British newspapers have invaded the United States with some spritely email offerings. The Daily Mirror, The Independent, The Guardian and The Daily Mail are among them.

Then there are many new entries of purely internet vintage. These include but aren’t limited to the leaders, Axios and Semafor — although Axios, with revenues of over $100 million, is the clear winner to date.

This suggests that journalism is alive and well and that its future is online, but its revenue stream isn’t certain. One hopes that the winner-takes-all history won’t repeat itself and that a vibrant new order of journalism, tempting to talent, grows in importance. After all, at one time big cities had many newspapers; New York had more than 20 daily newspapers.

The threshold of entry for internet publishing is low. A pay-per-view rather than a paywall would establish a new golden era in which skill and talent would carry the day and where the right content would propel its authors and the publications to success.

As to my world of great presses, raging like livid monsters in the middle of night, well, there will be some for a long time. But the new carriers of that critical commodity known as journalism will carry the day.

The Trump Way Comes to The Washington Post

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As Juliet might have said, “O America, America, wherefore art thou America?”

What has become of us when the president, Donald Trump, who opposes big government, wants the government to have its hand in everything, from the operation of The Kennedy Center to the regulatory commissions, to gender identification, to traffic control in New York City, to the composition of the White House press pool?

Under the pretext of cutting three shibboleths (waste,  fraud and abuse), Trump is moving to bring everything he can under his control, to infuse every apparatus of the country with the Trump brand, which emerges as a strange amalgam of personal like and dislike, enthusiasm and antipathy.

He likes the brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — he who orders assassinations outside of Russia and causes his opponents to fall out of windows — so much so that he is about to throw Ukraine under the bus. Short shrift for people who have fought the Russian invader with blood and bone.

He has a strange antipathy to our allies, starting with our blameless neighbor Canada, our supply cabinet of everything from electricity to tomatoes.

He shows a marked indifference to the poor, whether they are homeless in America or dying of starvation in Africa.

He and his agent, Elon Musk the Knife, have obliterated the U.S. Agency for International Development, ended our soft-power leadership in the world and handed diplomatic opportunities to China; while at home, housing starts are far behind demand, the price of eggs is out of sight, and necessary and productive jobs in government are being axed with a kind of malicious pleasure.

The mindlessness of Musk’s marauders has cut the efficiency he is supposed to be cultivating. It is reasonable to believe that government worker productivity is at an all-time low.

If there is a word this administration enjoys it is “firing.” The Trump-Musk duopoly relishes that word. It goes back to the reality television show “The Apprentice,” when its star, Trump, loved to tell a contestant, “You’re fired!”  Now a catchphrase from a canceled TV program is central to the national government.

Meanwhile, the extraordinary assemblage of misfits and socially challenged individuals in Trump’s Cabinet — and, it must be said, who were confirmed by the Republicans in the Senate — are doing their bit to disassemble their departments, fixing things that aren’t broken, breaking things because they hated their authors or because revenge is a policy. Look to the departments of Defense, Justice, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security — really all the departments — and you’ll find these hearties at work.

There is a quality of cruelty that is alien to the American ethos, that is un-American, running though all of this. When everything that isn’t broken is fixed, we may lose:

—Our standing in the world as the beacon of decency.

—Our role as a guarantor of peace.

—The trust of our allies.

—Our place as the exemplary of constitutional government and the rule of law.

—Our leadership in all aspects of science, from space exploration to medicine to climate.

Nowhere is the animus of Trump and its lust to control more evident than its hatred of the free press. The free flow of news, fact, and opinion, already damaged by the economic realities of the news business and its outdated models, is an anathema to Trump. A free press is a free country. There is no alternative.

This week, the White House and the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, moved to destroy the norm of decades in the press room, where the press corps collectively through its elected body, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has assigned seats. The association also decides who will be a part of the small rotating group of journalists and photographers — the pool — who accompany the president. It has been effective and is time-honored.

Now Leavitt, a Trump triumphalist, will choose the pool and favor the inclusion of podcasters and talk-show hosts who are reliably enthusiastic about the president.

At The Washington Post — the local newspaper of government — editorial pages are to be defenestrated. The Post, which has had for decades the best editorial columnists in the nation, is to be silenced. Its owner, the billionaire Jeff Bezos, has told the editorial staff that going forward they will write only about personal liberties and free markets.

It is the end of an era of great journalism, the dimming of a bright light, the encroachment of darkness in the nation’s capital.

A newspaper can’t be perfect, and The Washington Post certainly is far from that. But it is a great newspaper, and its proprietor has been manipulated by the controlling fingers of the Trump machine: A machine that values only loyalty and brooks no criticism. A machine that is unmoved by the nation’s and world’s tears. A Romeo who doesn’t hear Juliet.

Fact-Checking Has Always Been an Elemental Part of Journalism

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A whole new area of endeavor is opening up for the entrepreneurial. Name it after the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. He allegedly hunted for an honest man and was possibly the founder of Cynicism.

Verification will become a vital business as the flood of misinformation engulfs us. What can be trusted? What source is reliable? What image is actual? Is the voice or image authentic, or has it been created with artificial intelligence?

Rather than fact-checking becoming outdated, as at Facebook, it will be essential. The source of news will be as important as the news. Publications with a reputation for accuracy, or their equivalent in this digital free-for-all information age, will be revered.

As — whether we like it or not — we all get our current information through journalism, journalism becomes more critical, not less so.

Elon Musk, who owns X, has declared that we are all journalists now. No, we are not.

You don’t have to spend four years in a university to become a journalist, but some reverence for the craft and some on-the-job training is necessary. Skill with the language, a knowledge of history, curiosity, and a desire to find out what is going on and tell people are all needed.

So is the hardest part of the qualification to define: news judgment. This is knowing what news is and seeing it immediately. You also need to be serious about facts and fact-checking.

Fact-checking, which Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, has equated to being incompatible with free speech, is at the heart of journalism. The individual journalist is haunted by a permanent fear (“the inner core of panic,” as my late first wife, Doreen, who was a superb journalist, described it) of, “Did I get it right? Is it Steven or Stephen or did the speaker say millions or a billions?”

Any news story has many facts and judgments, most executed under pressure and in real-time. If it is essential, it needs to be gotten out.

After World War II, and mainly because of excellent reporting from London during the Blitz, the BBC developed a reputation worldwide as trustworthy in getting it right. In much of the world, that reputation still stands. But in Britain, the BBC is reviled for being left-leaning and woke-thinking.

The once great news service, United Press International, had a reputation among editors for being unreliable. I never found anyone who could prove that it was less dependable than its competitors, the Associated Press, Reuters and the English version of Agence France-Presse, but the myth was oft-repeated and stuck.

Similarly, The New York Times is regarded worldwide as exemplifying the gold standard for reliability. However, in the United States, many regard it as left-leaning and, therefore, less believable.

That doesn’t mean there are no mistakes, indeed egregious errors; we all make them and suffer the shame that goes with it. The agony of getting facts wrong is real and profound and known to every journalist.

Factual inaccuracy is a self-inflicted wound on a publication. If one fact is wrong, the veracity of the entire outlet is called into question in the reader’s mind.

Ownership is not as important as the integrity of the individual operation. The Wall Street Journal is regarded as being accurate, but the New York Post is thought of as having dubious accuracy, and Fox News is seen as incontrovertibly political, yet all three have the same ownership.

In the news business, fact-checking has to be part of the process. It can’t be glommed on after the event.

Journalism and its army of reporters can only help with facts in some measure.

When it comes to the industrial-scale disinformation pouring out of governments and political parties everywhere — and especially now out of Russia and China — technology needs to be mobilized to fight the technology-generated lies: fake images, sounds and news situations.

The best hope is that technology will be able to fight its own evil; to be able to tag the fake or at least to identify the real with watermarks — where the information came from and how it was created.

The world needs a fact-checking ethic, something that has existed quietly in journalism for a long time but which is threatened to be overwhelmed in the asymmetry where journalism is a small part of the dishonesty spewing out of social media, such as Facebook, X and Truth Social, and from Russia and other mischief-bent regimes.

Meanwhile Diogenes’ cynicism may be the first line of defense, along with the journalism of old. Verify before you trust.

The Crisis in Journalism — More Reporting Needed

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There is a lot of dither about the future of journalism. Make no mistake, it is the essential commodity.

If you know what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine or Syria, it is because brave journalists told you. Not the government, not some academic institution, not artificial intelligence, and not hearsay from your friends or from a political party.

The crisis in journalism isn’t that it failed analytically in the last election, or that we — an irregular army of individualists — failed, but that journalism has run out of money and its political enemies have found that the courts (and the fear of libel prosecution) can terrorize the companies that own the media.

In 2016, the gossipy site Gawker was sued by the pro wrestler and political figure Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was financed by the billionaire investor Peter Thiel.

Now come two suits, filed by President-elect Donald Trump: One that he won against ABC News, and one to be filed against the Des Moines Register. It is reported that conservative interests plan a series of these legal interventions against the media.

This will have a frightening effect on news coverage. When there is fear of prosecution, there is less likely to be investigative news coverage.

So far, the most troublesome of the prosecutions has been the one against ABC News. The network caved in early. It agreed to pay $15 million plus legal fees into a fund for what will be the first Trump presidential library.

Could it be that ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney wants good relations with the incoming administration?

However, a much bigger problem faces the media than the fear of prosecution. It is that the old media, led by local and regional newspapers, is dying. Although there are thousands of podcasts, they don’t take up the slack.

You could listen to an awful lot of podcasts and not know what is going on. State houses and local courts aren’t being covered. The sanitizing effect of press surveillance has been withdrawn and, frankly, God help the poor defendants in a local court where there is a disproportionate desire to plead cases, to avoid honest trials even when there is conspicuous doubt.

I never tire of repeating what Dan Raviv, former CBS News correspondent, said to me once, “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so. However, there is a problem: Journalism needs to be concentrated in a newspaper or a broadcast outlet where there is enough revenue to do the job. Otherwise, you get what I think of as the upside-down pyramid of more and more commentary, based on less and less reporting.

We are awash in commentary, some of it very good and some of it trash. It is all based on news gathered by those news organizations that can afford to employ a phalanx of reporters.

Regional newspapers used to have Washington bureaus and foreign bureaus. At one time, the Baltimore Sun had 12 overseas bureaus. Now it has none.

This is the story nationwide. Fewer people actually cover the news, digging, checking and telling us what they have found.

Throughout the history of journalism, technology has been disruptive, sometimes advantageously and sometimes less so. Modern printing presses developed at the end of the 19th century were important boosters, as was the invention of the Linotype machine in 1884.

On the negative side, television killed off evening papers, and podcasts are taking a toll on radio. Now, the internet and tech companies have siphoned off most of the revenue that supported newspapers, radio and television.

As one can’t have a free and fair society without vibrant journalism, we clearly need a new paradigm which is internet-based news organizations that are large enough and rich enough to do the job in the time-honored way with reporters asking questions, whether it is at the courthouse, the White House or on the battlefield.

There is a clear choice: News and informed analysis, or rumor and conspiracy.

No, Mr. President, We’re Not the ‘Enemy of the People’

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The media is to blame. That is the cry of the autocrat, the dictator and the shifty politician.

I have heard variations of it since I started in the newspaper business at the age of 16. The “media” is more now more frequently used than the “press,” which was the old term.

I have heard it from crooks, con artists, egomaniacs, communists, fascists, anti-Semites, ethnic butchers and madmen.

I heard it in person from Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal Chilean dictator, in Santiago and from Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last Communist leader of Poland, in Warsaw. I heard it in person from the defenders of Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean tyrant, and I heard it from the lips of Kenneth Kaunda, who sent Zambia down the wrong track. I heard it in person from the sycophants around Cuban strongman Fidel Castro.

In Washington I heard it from cabinet officers, congressmen, chief executive officers, contractors and lobbyists, innumerable military contractors when I was publisher of The Energy Daily and Defense Week.

Now I am hearing it from President Donald Trump. He is attacking the media, using a term – the enemy of the people – that I have only heard from dictators. Trump is attacking the very basis of all freedom: the freedom of the press. That is the freedom to find the news and publish it.

When the president attacks the media he immediately makes the gathering of the news more difficult. Those who want to brush us off, lie to us, subvert our work, endanger our income and our lives are emboldened.

Worse, the work itself is brought into doubt.

Truth is the victim: If lies can pass as fact, truth is in the gutter and the body politic is in trouble. Look to Germany in the 1930s, Cuba in totalitarian maw, the Soviet Union and its satellites under Communism’s yoke. Look to Venezuela today. Where evil is afoot, the media is silenced or subverted.

Against this, the editorial board of The Boston Globe has persuaded more than 100 newspapers to respond to Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric on Aug. 16.

The thought is powerful and right, but the tactic is wrong. In showing a united front to the White House, The Globe and its allies validate the White House myth that the media is united against the people.

The media is united in only one thing: doing its job. It is not in any way monolithic. To suggest that we a monolith is to suggest, as Trump does, that there is a media hegemon with a common purpose. There is not.

We are a calling of irregulars, from the smallest newsletter to the great urban newspapers and from the podcaster to the star-heavy television networks. That is our strength; the diversity that makes us a cast of tens of thousands with individual parts.

Dan Raviv, then with CBS Radio, told me in a few words what is involved, “I like to find out what’s going on and tell people.” He nailed this job.

Yes, we make mistakes. Yes, we can be arrogant. Yes, we can be an embarrassment. Yes, some insert opinions when they should not. I still cringe at things I have gotten wrong, going back decades. At best, our mistakes keep us humble.

I would suggest that those who think we are the enemies of the people – a preposterous idea — just remember that everything they know, with infinitesimal exception, was brought to them by journalists; journalists covering the White House, journalists writing about government, business, foreign affairs, science and wars. Individuals trying to find out what is going on from Moscow to Beijing and, when we can, Pyongyang.

When the courts have failed, the politicians have let all down, and justice is in danger, drop a dime. Call a reporter: the appellate court of last resort.

You do not call the media, you call a reporter. That individuality is our ultimate strength — and the public’s last, very last, line of defense.

 

WILKES-BARRE, PA – AUGUST 2, 2018: President Donald Trump gestures to the media as he discusses “fake news” at a campaign rally for Congressman Lou Barletta. Credit: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com

 

War on Media: Now Trump Wants Our Credentials

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Oh, dear! President Trump has hinted that journalists should lose their credentials. He probably means the passes which allow journalists to enter the White House complex at the Northwest Gate and to walk to the briefing room a few hundred yards away.

Over the decades, successive administrations — in my accounting, starting with Jimmy Carter — have reduced the amount of freedom journalists enjoy inside the White House fence. It has been whittled away to the token that it is today. Jousting with the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, is not freedom to gather the news.

A reporter used to be able to walk around the complex without an escort and meet with White House staff in the Old Executive Office Building (now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) without an escort.

More important, when you had an appointment in the West Wing, the nerve center of any administration, once you were through the door, you were at liberty to sit in the corridor before or after your appointment and often someone would invite you in for an unscheduled chat. At least, that was my experience and it was invaluable. You and they learned things. It was a two-way flow.

Incidentally, you did not need one of the prized “hard passes” to do that. Even now, in a time of restriction, a journalist does not need a hard pass to cover a briefing. You can get cleared through the gate by that part of the White House communications operation known as the Lower Press Office. You need pretty good identification like a congressional press pass, which are issued by standing committees of journalists covering Congress; sometimes just a passport or driver’s license.

Trump’s tweet about credentials suggests he believes all reporters need these to do their jobs. Fact is credentials are useful but not essential. Indeed, I question the emphasis on credentials in Washington because they hint at the licensing of journalists, devoutly to be avoided and contested — a constitutional violation under the First Amendment.

Credentials are a game subject to abuse: the very abuse Trump hints at.

It has even been suggested, by the George W. Bush and other administrations, that the press should be kicked out of the White House and given a briefing room in a nearby government building. One of the major values of being inside the White House fence is to garner interviews in the driveway with important visitors — to be able to file on the spot with authenticity and to be a constant, if thorny, reminder to the White House, any White House, that the eyes and ears of the world are feet away.

The damage that Trump has done to the media and by extension to this liberal democracy, is the ceaseless denigration. In 2017, 46 journalists were killed around the world – 26 so far this year — for just doing their jobs. Death in the line of duty is not “fake.”

What is the reporting job? It was best encapsulated by my friend Dan Raviv when he was with CBS News Radio. He said, “I try to find out what is going on and tell people.”

Quite so.

Trump makes that simple idea of finding out what is going on and telling people more difficult and sometimes dangerous. Trump’s daily assault on the media has encouraged all of those with something to hide: those who are cheating, lying, torturing, killing and suppressing the freedom of others. He is damaging the body politic here and in other countries.

Journalism maybe a feeble light but it is a light. For many it is last hope for justice, the ultimate appellate court and the hope that they will be heard.

Trump’s relentless undermining comes at the worst of times for the journalism we have known. Newspapers are gasping, television is losing advertisers and viewers. If all this were not sobering enough, many are demanding that the great new forces for disseminating journalistic output, Google and Facebook, should practice censorship. Shame.

Finding out what’s going on and telling people is hard enough without Trump’s dangerous disparagement — and politically correct censorship.

 

Photo: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders takes questions from reporters at the White House, Friday, October 27, 2017. Editorial credit: Michael Candelori / Shutterstock.com

Talking Heads Are the Salt and Fat Diet of Television News

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Guess you’ve noticed: There are no politicians on the politics-obsessed cable news channels. Instead, there are journalists talking about politicians and politics; rafts of journalists organized into “panels” to comment, in seconds, on events.

Twenty years ago, it was different. So much so that I started a television program with the avowed intention of letting the public see who was writing the political news in the newspapers. We are still on the air, but with fewer journalists commenting.

In that seemingly distant time (which was, in reality, not very long ago), the principal political talk shows were “The McLaughlin Group,” under the pioneering John McLaughlin; “Inside Washington,” formerly “Agronsky & Company,” with Gordon Peterson; and the long-lived “Washington Week in Review” with Ken Bode.

They were weekly, half-hour programs and mine, “White House Chronicle,” joined the roster as a distant “also ran.” We aimed at introducing print journalists to a TV audience. Other programs had set round tables that included Tribune Media’s Clarence Page, because he was a delight to work with — as we found on our program — and because he was informed and entertaining.

Women were fewer and they were led by Elizabeth Drew of The New Yorker, Eleanor Cliftof Newsweek, Cokie Roberts of NPR, and syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer.

Cable news meant CNN, then still trying to be magisterial.

Fast forward and television is chock-full of journalists talking about the news in what is now a staple of cable television; and rather than occupying half an hour a week these “panels,” as the hosts call them, are on pretty well 24/7.

The New York Times publishes under the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” On television, it’s all the news that can be talked about — and they do, endlessly. I think that is pretty entertaining and most of the talking heads seem to have really good sources; they are on the news — all the politics that can be talked about. It is the fat and sugar diet of TV.

What is missing are the subjects. Few members of Congress, with the exception of the leaders, are seen or talked about by name on television. They have been cleared from the television politics smorgasbord. Even the talking heads do not name them. The ubiquitous panelists talk about “my sources” or “a conservative congressman” or “a Democratic member.” No names. No faces.

There are reasons aplenty for this. One, now that there is more party discipline, except for people like Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, it is known what the party the line will be: It is there in the talking points — and that makes for little news and boring television.

Another is that while journalists go for instant analysis, a cable television staple, politicians are scared of “stepping in it.” Search technology is so fearsome now that almost anything any politician says can be retrieved and put on the screen. That is fodder for future “gotcha” moments. The late Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” was a master of this. “In 2003, you said” and there it was, right on the screen, the politico making a regrettable remark.

Also, there is always the question of what the public wants (ratings to the TV industry). The public appears to be more interested in journalists debunking political leaders than the nuts and bolts of legislation or even what is happening in, say, science or the rest of the world. Salt and fat gets the eyeballs.

The late Arnaud de Borchgrave lamented that in his day, aspiring reporters longed to be foreign correspondents, now they yearn to cover Capitol Hill and the White House. Ralph Nader — who was once a prized “get” in the parlance of television bookers — has just issued a paper regretting the dominance of political chatter in the news space. Maybe he will be asked to talk about it on television, but it is unlikely.

On the upside, there are some awesome new talents, and more women in the Washington journalistic firmament — even if some of us like it when journalists, in the words of radio veteran Dan Raviv, just set out to “find out what’s happening and tell people.” No salt, no fat, just the facts.

Scaramucci’s Vain Quest to Stop the Leaks

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There’s a new sheriff in town. He has strapped on his shooting irons and has been hunting down varmints — varmints right in the ranch house.

The sheriff is Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, and the varmints are the “leakers.” Watch out!

Scaramucci has threatened to fire people. He says he may be contacting the FBI and the Justice Department. He has also hinted that the leakers are high officials who are using juniors to contact the press.

This is a strange interpretation of “communications.”

The White House is leaking because it isn’t talking coherently. The Trump administration is not rooted in policy or philosophy, and the White House staff is divided against itself; a deeply unhappy place wanting in direction and internal clarity.

So, it leaks. It leaks for personal reasons. It leaks for patriotic reasons. It leaks out of frustration. And it leaks because no one is in charge administratively: too many assistants — including Scaramucci — are reporting directly to the president, eschewing the line of command that normally flows through the chief of staff and the national security adviser. With Scaramucci on the loose, Reince Priebus is chief of staff in title only: a male nipple.

The communications failure is enormous and extends down to the inability of the press office to answer simple questions, like who was playing golf with the president? One wouldn’t assume this to be a state secret, but reporters ask and get no answer. They aren’t rebuffed, they’re just not answered.

In this instance, a question not answered is a revelation of another sort: the communications staff members are willfully kept in the dark. It isn’t claimed that state secrets and initiatives are being discussed on the greens. It’s a simple matter of the president’s recreation. Is Trump ashamed of the company he keeps?

The avalanche of leaks are cries for clarity in a chaotic administration. They are the symptoms, not the disease.

The leaks may just get worse. But the mechanics or leaking will get more inventive as Scaramucci ferrets around, suspecting his colleagues who will live in increasing fear.

Leaking is as old a journalism and was going on long before the invention of movable type. Journalists regard it with equanimity, as part of the trade, an integral part of the job — also as part of their right to collect the news, and the public’s right to know.

However, leaking does have large consequences when it comes to how the government makes decisions. The anti-leakers have a point here: Nowadays, ideas can’t be batted about inside government with abandon. Particularly, they can’t be committed to writing without the fear of them getting into the press.

Leaking classified information is criminal. WikiLeaks troubled many journalists; delicate choices in a democracy.

But that’s not what Scaramucci is fishing for; he wants to end the embarrassment of the president.

For those who keep secrets, technology has made the job a thousand times harder. When I was a young reporter, a congressman or White House staffer wishing to show you some document — to leak it — either had to tell you what it said or allow you to see and copy it by hand. This was risky, as only a few hands would’ve had access to the document or letter.

The Xerox machine changed that instantly, and the arrival of the digital age put a leak a keystroke away. Privacy and secrecy aren’t what they used to be.

But the hunt-and-kill mission Scaramucci is on won’t stop this White House — this seething hive of fear and ambition, this policy free for all, this scarcely controlled chaos, this gyre of half-formed purposes — from leaking.

With Sheriff Scaramucci nosing around, casting doubt on everyone, the leaking might accelerate but will be more devious: Tell a junior to tell friend to tell a reporter, rather than telling the reporter something directly. Email and telephones will be eschewed, or used with great care.

If the communications director wants to control leaking, he should try communicating. He shouldn’t send the press secretary out there looking like a pudding before the custard is poured over it, without her knowing what the president’s policies are or what he meant by his latest enigmatic tweet.

Sheriff, calm the chaos, and start communicating. Then, pardner, the leaks will dry up like them thar desert.

 

For InsideSources

Photo:  White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, Tuesday, July 25, 2017. AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS

 

Covering the White House, From Twilight to Dark

by 1 Comment

Freedom of the press, in my view, has two parts. First there is the freedom to publish, to criticize and to petition. Then there is the critical issue of the freedom to gather the news — not just to report it but also to gather it.

Without the freedom to gather the news, the freedom to print it, broadcast it or comment on it becomes pyrrhic. The official line predominates.

Right now, the freedom to report the news at the White House is under attack and the public’s right know is being impinged. What you get: all the news that can be leaked.

Covering the news at the White House has gotten progressively harder since the days of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the first administrations I covered.

The Trump administration has attacked the press, ridiculed it and is starving it of critical access. Now there is talk of doing away with the daily press briefing, honored and needed. It is where the government is asked what it is doing and ideally tells the people. It is America’s answer to the much admired “Question Time” in Britain’s House of Commons.

It has never been easy to cover the White House, and history is littered with the ways in which presidents sought to affect the way in which they were covered. Jack Kennedy, a darling to some reporters, so hated the coverage he was getting from The New York Herald Tribune that for a while he forbade it in the White House.

Lyndon Johnson worked over the press corps the way he worked over members of Congress: punishment and reward.

At The Washington Daily News, Wauhillau La Hay worried aloud — often in my presence — that the file from the Scripps-Howard Washington bureau (it was an afternoon newspaper owned by Scripps-Howard) would make it hard for her to cover the social side of the White House, her assignment.

Richard Nixon believed that the press was out to get him and his famous enemies list was real. Yet he ran a surprisingly open White House, as had Johnson.

Compared to what was to follow, it was wide open. Once a reporter got through the gate you were a free agent to roam much of the grounds and to visit the West Wing, if you had someone to see. More important, you got one-on-one interviews with principles without some minder from the press office sitting in and acting as a double agent, reporting back on both the journalist and the interviewee.

After your interview, you were sometimes invited into the office of another staffer. As often as not, they wanted to know what you knew as much as you wanted to know what they knew, even during Watergate.

The best information is the information you get face-to-face, one-on-one. That has become very difficult as time has rolled on. Personally, I found the George H.W. Bush open enough. I remember going over to see his chief of staff, John Sununu, without problem. I phoned him, got a time and went over. No press office involvement. Once, he asked me if I would like to write a speech for the president. I averred.

Excessive leaking is a symptom, a cry from within the belly of the beast that all is not well. At this point the leakers are patriots, not criminals.

In recent administrations, the only way for White House reporters to get into conversations with White House staffers has been to travel with the president overseas: a very expensive stab in the dark. A European trip can cost more than $20,000, and few news outlets can afford the gamble. Even if you are in the pool and sitting on Air Force One, nothing is guaranteed.

If, as has been suggested, the daily briefings stop, more leaks are inevitable. If you cannot seek the information directly, you have to try to get it otherwise. If the front door is closed, a ladder up to the window is the next step. At the same time, relationships become more devious. Like an illicit love affair, no public acknowledgment in public places.

If the right to gather the news is abridged, the whole concept of a free press is diminished. The diminishment is underway.

Government in the dark is the government of authoritarians; not the kind of government one expects from a nation that prohibits the “abridging” of the press in its Constitution. Shame.

 

For InsideSources

Photo: Richard M. Nixon press conference. General Services Administration. National Archives and Records Service. Office of Presidential Libraries. Office of Presidential Papers. (01/20/1969 – ca. 12/1974); President (1969-1974 : Nixon). White House Photo Office. (1969 – 1974)