I do a little research and discover Clinton is referring to the trip on which I accompanied her. She’s claiming that, as our military plane landed in Bosnia, we took sniper fire. She even says she had to duck and run for cover to escape the flying bullets.
The idea is ludicrous. Yes, we flew into a recent war zone and were told it could be dangerous. We were prepared for the possibility of hostile fire. But it never materialized. And the fact is, had hostile forces fired upon our aircraft, our military pilot wouldn’t have just flown right into them and landed. Especially considering that accompanying us on the trip were the president’s daughter, Chelsea, and two entertainers who came along to perform for the troops: comedian Sinbad, and singer Sheryl Crow. If there had been any threat of our plane being shot at, we simply would’ve flown to an alternate, safe destination.
I rarely hang on to story materials for very long, but in this case, I go to my office in Washington, dig through some boxes of records, and discover I still have notes, photographs, and videotape from that trip in 1996. The video clearly disproves candidate Clinton’s story. It shows Clinton and Chelsea disembarking from the plane on the tarmac in Bosnia, leisurely smiling for photographs and greeting a local schoolgirl on the runway.
No sniper fire. No ducking and running.
I tell CBS Evening News executive producer Rick Kaplan what I have. He orders up a story for that night’s newscast. I’m aware that he and the Clintons are acquaintances. An hour before the broadcast, he looks over my script.
“It’s kind of awkward,” I comment to Kaplan. “I know you’re friends with the Clintons.”
“We’re not that good of friends,” Kaplan replies, not missing a beat. “A great story’s a great story.”
I’m comforted by his sentiments. This manager isn’t trying to steer or influence reporting on the basis of his own personal beliefs or relationships. His successor, in my view, would be the polar opposite.
Kaplan approves the Clinton Bosnia script and makes it that night’s lead story. The result is devastating to Clinton’s campaign. Some political observers say her sniper fire claim, in stark contrast to the video evidence, is the final blow that knocks her out of serious contention in the Democratic primaries. This paves the way for her opponent, Obama, to win the nomination.
In this instance, the executive producer was able to disconnect his personal feelings from a legitimate news story. Today, the public rightly has come to assume that many of the news media just don’t do that. The public believes we report the news through the lens of our own biases. Or amid influence by political or corporate interests. And so they try to take that into account when they view and read our stories. But they’re sick and tired of hedging the news based on the reporter or channel they’re watching.
This news outlet did the story? they subconsciously think. They’re probably trying to make Republicans look good. So I’ll only believe about forty percent of that report.
That reporter did the story? He’s probably doing the bidding of Democrats. I’ll bet only half the truth is being told.
All these people really want is the News. They’re thirsty for news that they don’t have to place odds on or discount. They want reporters to follow a story wherever it leads, no matter how unpleasant, no matter whom it touches or implicates. They just want the truth, to the extent it can be known.
The perception that opinions are intertwined with news may have grown sharper in recent years, but the reality is long-standing.
As a high school student, I observed that my hometown newspaper’s sportswriters often seemed to be rooting for the opposing high school in town.
“Sir,” I wrote in an indignant letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “Sarasota High has always gotten top billing in your paper—especially in sports. I, being a student of Riverview High School, consider this unfair. When Sarasota wins a football game, it’s ‘Sarasota Rips Apart . . .’—but when Riverview wins, it’s more likely to be ‘Riverview Barely Escapes . . .’ ” I went on to use the example of a specific article that I felt demonstrated blatant favoritism.
I concluded: “Sir, I challenge you to reread that article and many others similar to it and declare it unbiased.”
I don’t think my letter led to any big changes at the local paper. But the process really got me thinking and, in a way, it helped shape me.
Not long after, in college, I found myself confronting opinions presented under the guise of news. I was researching an issue for a speech class debate when I noted instances of journalists at news magazines and newspapers clearly expressing their opinions in their reporting without attribution, as if fact. For example, one might write: “advocates who want bean balls in professional baseball to be punished more severely are only hurting the sport and doing a disservice to fans.”
That’s an opinion, I’d think to myself, as I’d reread the passage to make sure. There’s no evidence cited. And it’s not attributed to anybody. Yet it’s stated as if it’s an established fact.
I brought this complaint to the attention of one of my journalism professors.
“They’re allowed to do that,” the professor explained professorially. “Especially in the print press, they often take editorial positions on controversial subjects.”
“But this isn’t an editorial,” I argued, pointing to the offending news article. “Shouldn’t they have to label their opinions as opinions? How is the rest of the article to be trusted when the reporter is advancing his own personal viewpoint?” The question was rhetorical.
Thereafter, I remained on the lookout for news stories in which reporters appeared to be presenting their own disguised opinions rather than information or viewpoints based on reporting.
| THE “SUBSTITUTION GAME”
It’s not too difficult to root out cases of unattributed opinions in news. But there are other, less obvious ways we may skew coverage, sometimes unintentionally. As a test to see whether our stories are leading us, or our biases are leading our stories, one can employ a simple logic exercise. I call it the Substitution Game. It takes a given news scenario and posits how we might treat a similar event if key players were substituted.
For example, on May 9, 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Obama said he had visited fifty-seven states in America. Everyone knew that Obama probably meant that he’d visited forty-seven states, not fifty-seven. He knows there are only fifty states. The remark, nothing more than a verbal gaffe, didn’t make big headlines. Substitution Game: What if Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had uttered the same misstatement? Do you think the news media would’ve been so quick to overlook it?
They weren’t quick to forgive Palin when she made a comparable geographical gaffe in July 2010. She referred to Kodiak Island in Alaska as “America’s largest island.” Everyone knew she probably meant that Kodiak is the largest island on the continent; Hawaii is the largest island in the United States. But unlike the overlooked Obama incident, some treated Palin’s error as major national news. Then, when President Obama accidentally referred to Hawaii as being part of Asia on November 15, 2011, most of the news media didn’t find it noteworthy.
National news outlets also prominently featured Palin’s November 24, 2010, remark about hostilities between North and South Korea. She told conservative radio host Glenn Beck “we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.” She meant South Korean.
But nobody made much of President Obama mistakenly saying on August 6, 2013, on The Tonight Show that Charleston, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Savannah, Georgia, are on the Gulf of Mexico. (They’re on the Atlantic side, not the Gulf.)
The press also pretty much looked the other way when President Obama invented a language called “Austrian” in April 2009. Austrians actually speak German. Substitution Game: Would the major press have ignored the same, understandable error had it been made by President
Bush?
Poor Republican vice president Dan Quayle got more bad press for a gaffe he never even committed. Maybe you’ve heard the story: Quayle remarked that he wished he’d studied Latin harder in school so that he could converse with the people of Latin America. It turns out the quote is no more than a joke about Quayle told in 1989 by Republican congresswoman Claudine Schneider. But several national publications were apparently so eager to believe it, they printed the anecdote as a fact and it took on a life of its own.
The point here isn’t which politicians are smarter or which gaffes are substantive versus meaningless. It’s that similar faux pas should elicit relatively similar treatment.
Too often they don’t.
And that’s just one way in which we’re losing our mojo. There are others.
By “we,” I mean the news media. And by “mojo,” I mean our ability to serve vigorously and effectively as the Fourth Estate. Watchdog to government and other powers that may otherwise overstep their bounds.
And we’re losing it without so much as a whimper. We’re voluntarily relinquishing it.
| THE COMPLIANT NEWS MEDIA
There are exceptions, of course, but it’s difficult to deny that the news media as a whole seems largely disinterested in some of the most important and controversial happenings on a given day. It must mystify those in the public who notice such things.
Often, our journalistic skepticism is misplaced. We’re more skeptical of those who blow the whistle than we are of those being exposed. When someone steps forward with information and accusations against powerful people or corporate interests, we’re too eager to buy the label that their enemies place on them, such as “disgruntled,” “publicity-seeking,” or “nutty” without carefully examining the facts at hand. After all, we think, why would somebody step out of line, even risk their job for the public’s good—for the truth? Perhaps it’s because we, ourselves, would never do such a thing that we’re suspicious of the mentality.
When a government entity or corporation calls a press conference or issues a news release, we’re often too quick to rush to report their “news,” accepting the information uncritically as if it’s an established fact just because they said so. We allow them to set the agenda for the day’s news without regard to the notion that they may be steering us in one direction to keep us from looking in another.
In fact, they’re so used to dictating the terms, they sometimes become enraged when we veer off script.
In January 2014, after President Obama’s State of the Union address, New York congressman Michael Grimm, a Republican, appears before an NY1 television camera in the U.S. Capitol in Washington for commentary. But when the questioning by reporter Michael Scotto pivots from Grimm’s chosen topic and into a federal investigation into his campaign finances, Grimm storms off. He returns a moment later, seemingly unaware that the camera is recording, and angrily whisper-yells to Scotto, “If you ever do that to me again, I’ll throw you off this fucking balcony. . . . I’ll break you in half.”
Scotto protests, “Why? It’s a valid question.”
The exchange, captured on video, goes viral. The public and other news reporters are understandably outraged at the physical threats and Grimm later apologizes. But we should ask, why does a news environment exist whereby Grimm comes to believe that he should be exempt from questions of public interest when they aren’t of his own design? (Three months later, Grimm was indicted on federal charges of tax evasion and perjury; charges he denied.)
The fact is, many of us in the media are more comfortable when we’re on the right side of the government and corporations that guide us. When we are, there’s less stress. Life is simpler. We can go home at night without work nagging at us. Nobody threatens to sue us. No one writes nasty emails or calls our bosses to complain.
In fact, the powers that be, prominent government leaders or corporate entities that we cover, may even pat us on the head.
They might as well be remarking “Good boy!” when they toss us a compliment as if we’re obedient lapdogs after we dismiss a story that could have damaged them. “Glad you didn’t fall for that old trick. You’re smarter than that,” they tell us with a figurative pat-pat. Sometimes, they even hint that one day, we might be offered a job working with them. That is, if we keep doing our jobs so well. Maybe we can become the press flack for the federal department of so-and-so. Or the pharmaceutical division of this-and-thus. We’re flattered by the offers, but we don’t really want to work for them. (Well, at least not now. Maybe later. Maybe down the road when we’re tired of the news business or it tires of us. We have to families to feed, college educations to pay for, after all . . .)
All the while, they’re gaining more control over how we think and what we report. In reality, for those who bother to look, history and experience teach that the biggest dose of skepticism should be reserved for the authorities that seek to influence us and the information they want us to receive.
But the biggest way in which the Fourth Estate is losing our mojo has less to do with disguised opinions or inconsistent treatment and more to do with a trend toward favoring the establishment, whoever it may be. We’re falling down on the job of being vigilant watchdogs of government and corporations. Today, they’re not to be bothered by persistent reporter questions about their behavior and motives. That’s viewed as harassment rather than watchdogging. A distraction if not an outright nuisance.
NBC investigative correspondent Lisa Myers departed NBC in 2014 not long after I parted ways with CBS, and she expressed a similar observation.
“I think journalism at its best is a matter of holding powerful people and institutions accountable and exposing injustice,” Myers told C-SPAN host Brian Lamb during a June 2014 edition of Q-and-A. “I fear today that we are not doing that enough.”
Are investigative and watchdog reporting dying a slow and painful death? Or has the pendulum just temporarily swung too far in the wrong direction? Can we coax it back?
None of this is to say that investigative journalism is entirely gone. There are strongly committed local television news stations, newspapers, and online organizations such as the Center for Public Integrity. On a national level, the networks employ many talented journalists, and programs such as 60 Minutes still produce strong work such as the 2011 report by correspondent Steve Kroft and producer Ira Rosen that exposed how members of Congress, the executive branch, and their staff use inside information gained through their jobs to profit financially. PBS produces excellent investigations such as its 2013 Frontline documentary examining why Wall Street executives escaped fraud prosecution in the mortgage crisis.
But overall, listen to the community of investigative reporters and there’s little doubt that it’s getting tougher to get investigative stories approved and published. I and my colleagues from other networks, local news outlets, and major newspapers compare notes and commiserate over drinks at investigative reporting conferences. We’re running into resistance from supervisors and meeting with increasing interference from commercial concerns.
“Right now, we’re not allowed to do stories about hospitals or pharmaceutical companies,” says one local news reporter in our group as another nods.
“For us it’s hospitals and car dealerships,” adds a third.
Sometimes, when an investigative story is accepted, it’s begrudgingly. After one of my hard-nosed story ideas got the green light from a broadcast executive in September, a subordinate manager sent me a message through a back channel.
“That story’s really a downer,” he complained, ordering me to leave out critical facts that he found depressing. “Isn’t there any way you can make it inspiring?”
Pushing original and investigative reporting has become like trying to feed the managers spinach. They don’t like the taste, but they occasionally hold their nose and indulge because it’s good for them—or because it looks good. T
hey much prefer it to be sugarcoated, deep-fried, or otherwise disguised so that it goes down easier.
Many good reporters have learned not to bother. Why come to work and fight every day for original and investigative reports when your superiors want to repeat stories that have already appeared in the New York Times, on the Internet, or on the competition? What’s the point of breaking new ground on an important story only to be told there’s no room for it because the news hole is filled up with the same dozen or so popular topics du jour? While many of those topics are perfectly legitimate, they’re often skin-deep summaries that don’t shed any new light. They’re not tough and challenging. They’re definitely not holding the powers that be accountable.
And more and more, those we’re supposed to hold accountable are calling the shots and naming the terms of our coverage. They’ve changed the way we do business and we’ve allowed it largely without objection.
In my experience covering Capitol Hill, public servants rarely agreed to conduct interviews on topics raised in the course of naturally occurring news. Instead, they schedule appearances and press conferences on the topics they wish to publicize. They email press releases announcing when and where we and our cameras should be, and wait for us to show up to be spoon-fed. But try doing an original story that demands an interview with them. Even public officials who sit on important committees over key issues beg off when it’s not a topic of their own choosing.
In the summer of 2013, CBS News decides to do a story on the controversial decision by the Transportation Security Administration to allow small knives back on planes. The knives were banned after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. We request an interview with the head of TSA: John Pistole. TSA denies the request. The government doesn’t feel a responsibility to be accountable. And the media accepts the denial without pressing.
As the days pass, criticism mounts over the TSA’s proposed policy change. The issue has captured the public’s attention. A week after denying our interview request, the TSA calls us and the other television news networks. TSA says Pistole will be available to us today. He wants to make TSA’s case. His press officers dictate the terms: the boss will do brief one-on-one interviews at the agency’s Virginia offices. The problem is, we did our story a week ago—that’s when we needed the interview. We weren’t planning another story today and the Pistole interview, a week later, wasn’t exactly promising to be newsy.
Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington Page 3