Unfreedom of the Press

by Mark R. Levin

  Next, Dallek makes this salient point when it comes to the press. “Almost all of Johnson’s outrageous personal behavior was hidden from the public. In the sixties, journalists largely kept their knowledge of presidential transgressions of the sort Johnson committed to themselves. And not just because current mores dictated such journalistic restraint; reporters and publishers, who had been a partisan force against Goldwater, were reluctant to undermine someone as progressive as LBJ. True, privately, he was sometimes a Neanderthal whose crudeness offended them, but in public he was an unflinching advocate of social reforms that promised large improvements in the lives of all Americans, particularly minorities and women. . . .”97

  Of course, this goes a long way in explaining the disparate media treatment Kennedy and Johnson received vis-à-vis Trump. Kennedy and Johnson were both Democrats and both progressives. In particular, Johnson launched the Great Society, the greatest expansion of federal welfare programs and entitlements since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Moreover, Kennedy and Johnson had defeated Republican candidates who were much hated by the media—Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, respectively. While the Democratic party-press turned on Johnson over the Vietnam War, they did much to protect his private life and Kennedy’s from public scrutiny.

  Although President Bill Clinton did not receive the kind of kid-gloves media treatment enjoyed by Kennedy and Johnson in their extramarital affairs while serving as president, it was Matt Drudge who broke the Monica Lewinsky story that Newsweek spiked at the last moment. As Drudge reported on January 17, 1998:

  At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

  The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president’s sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until last month. . . .

  Ironically, several years ago, it was Isikoff that found himself in a shouting match with editors who were refusing to publish even a portion of his meticulously researched investigative report that was to break Paula Jones. Isikoff worked for the WASHINGTON POST at the time, and left shortly after the incident to build them for the paper’s sister magazine, NEWSWEEK.98

  There were also serious questions raised about NBC’s reporting on rape allegations against Clinton dating to the time when he was attorney general of Arkansas. As Breitbart reported: “After filming the 1999 interview [with Juanita Broaddrick by correspondent Lisa Myers], NBC waited 35 days until finally airing the exclusive. The timeline is critical. The Senate voted to acquit Clinton in the impeachment case on Feb. 12. NBC’s interview, conducted January 20, 1999, did not run until Feb. 24, and the network placed it opposite the highly-rated Grammy Awards.”99

  Although NBC denied any nefarious motive in delaying the show’s airing, “[s]ome have questioned NBC’s motivation in waiting to air Broaddrick’s charge of rape. ‘The 35-day interval between tape and air is now one of the legends of the impeachment process. Why didn’t the American public get to hear Mrs. Broaddrick before the Senate voted to acquit Mr. Clinton on Feb. 12?’ wrote Philip Weiss in the Observer in 1999.”100

  Compare these examples not only to the press coverage received by President Trump, but the tawdry reporting surrounding the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh for associate justice of the Supreme Court. As was reported by news outlets, Kavanaugh was accused of exposing himself, participating in drugging and gang-raping girls, raping a woman on a boat, being in a bar fight, drinking heavily in high school, and committing perjury, among other things.101 Kavanaugh, a sitting federal appellate judge, had two strikes against him—he was nominated by President Trump and was widely considered (rightly or wrongly) another originalist vote on the Supreme Court should he be confirmed. Therefore, the Democratic party-press abandoned all professional journalistic standards in a failed but disgraceful spectacle in assisting Senate Democrats to destroy Kavanaugh’s character and prevent his confirmation.

  EPILOGUE

  * * *

  A STANDARDLESS PROFESSION

  IN THE DAYS leading up to and during the American Revolution, the patriots who ran the printing presses and produced the pamphlets and newspapers were intent on establishing a nation founded on republican ideals of liberty, private property rights, representative government, freedom of speech, etc. They were open and transparent about their purpose. Indeed, they were often leaders in the revolutionary cause, making the intellectual, emotional, and factual arguments for independence. Later, the party-press, in which newspapers aligned publicly with political parties and candidates, made no bones about their intentions. Newspapers and newsmen were advocates for a particular party, candidate, or policy, and were clear about their allegiances.

  At the turn of the last century, during the rise of the Progressive Movement, the mass media claimed to desire a “scientific” and “professional” approach to news gathering and reporting, one centered on “objectivity,” and they sought to distance themselves from the identity media. But even the idea and definition of objectivity became a point of debate and dispute, and remains so today. The word “objective” itself, and its application to the news, is used in a way that overlooks or excuses a news outlet’s or reporter’s overt fidelity to ideological progressivism and Democratic Party partiality. The contention is that the vetting of the news requires objective uniformity and standards, not the person or newsroom themselves. Consequently, in the last hundred years or so, the attitude has been that journalists need not be objective in their own thinking or politics or seek objectivity in their own thinking or politics, as long as they are objective in their analytical method of gathering and reporting the news.

  Turning again to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel and their book, The Elements of Journalism, they make the point this way: “A stronger, more unified, and more transparent method of verifying the news would . . . be the single most important step that those who practice journalism could take to address and, if necessary, correct the rising perception that the work of journalists is marred by bias. . . . What would this journalism of objective method—rather than aim—look like? What should citizens expect from the press as a reasonable discipline of reporting?”1

  Kovach and Rosenstiel provide five “intellectual principles of a science of reporting”:

  1. Never add anything that was not there.

  2. Never deceive the audience.

  3. Be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives.

  4. Rely on your own original reporting.

  5. Exercise humility.2

  However, it is quite clear that this interpretation of objectivity, while seemingly alluring, has proved impossible for most newsrooms and journalists. The reason is that most partisans are unable or unwilling to put aside their personal ideological and political perspectives or, even worse, they consider them essential to moving and improving society through activism. This is the fundamental nature of the modern media. For the most part, the objectivity of methods has become the partisanship of ideological and political results.

  The examples of ideologically and politically motivated stories are voluminous. And they lead to flat-out media fabrications and deceit. A few of the most notorious recent examples include:

  • the Rolling Stone story defaming a University of Virginia dean in a false campus rape story;3

  • the false allegations of rape against members of the Duke lacrosse team;4

  • Dan Rather’s discredited report about George W. Bush
’s military record;5

  • the smear of Brett Kavanaugh;6

  • the smear of the Covington Catholic students;7

  • the seemingly endless list of false reports about President Trump, including collusion;8 and on and on.

  In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of the New York Times, created the famous slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” It still appears on the masthead of the newspaper today. He wrote the slogan as a declaration of the newspaper’s intention to report the news impartially.9 But the Times, which is considered the gold standard of journalism by other newsrooms and journalists and a guide star for news stories and leads, has a wretched history of deceit and untruthfulness virtually unmatched by any other news organization. Having botched miserably the coverage of Adolph Hitler’s genocide against the Jews and Joseph Stalin’s genocide against the Ukrainians, either of which should have forever tainted the integrity and reliability of the Times, today it self-servingly and arrogantly portrays itself as leading the collective media rampart for freedom of the press. Yet, is not the newspaper a well-known bastion of progressivism, which frequently distorts its reporting? And do not such misrepresentations about its true purpose pervert the role and purpose of journalism and a free press? Circumspection is not the media’s strong point. And rather than clean up their act with serious self-policing by reforming their practices and standards, the Times and other media outlets pound their chests with self-righteous adoration, as they proclaim themselves the defenders of a free press.

  As recently as February 20, 2019, current Times publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger (Ochs’s great-great grandson), responding to President Trump referring to the newspaper as “the enemy of the people”—as the president was frustrated with yet another “news” story, this time an “investigative report” filled with allegations and innuendos about him and his administration from anonymous sources—publicly lectured the president and the nation about the importance of a free press. He wrote:

  America’s founders believed that a free press was essential to democracy because it is the foundation of an informed, engaged citizenry. That conviction, enshrined in the First Amendment, has been embraced by nearly every American president. Thomas Jefferson declared, “The only security of all is in a free press.” John F. Kennedy warned about the risks to “free society without a very, very active press.” Ronald Reagan said, “There is no more essential ingredient than a free, strong and independent press to our continued success.”

  All these presidents had complaints about their coverage and at times took advantage of the freedom every American has to criticize journalists. But in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle. It’s a principle that previous occupants of the Oval Office fiercely defended regardless of their politics, party affiliation, or complaints about how they were covered.

  The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous. It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies. As I have repeatedly told President Trump face to face, there are mounting signs that this incendiary rhetoric is encouraging threats and violence against journalists at home and abroad.

  Through 33 presidential administrations, across 167 years, The New York Times has worked to serve the public by fulfilling the fundamental role of the free press. To help people, regardless of their backgrounds or politics, understand their country and the world. To report independently, fairly and accurately. To ask hard questions. To pursue the truth wherever it leads. That will not change.10

  Despite this deprecatory and hyperbolic statement against the president, who simply dared to harshly condemn the Times and its reporting, it is a fact that the Times frequently does not pursue the truth wherever it leads. And this is certainly true today in its coverage of the Trump presidency, where it has been predictably and aggressively hostile.

  Indeed, former ABC News anchor and longtime journalist Ted Koppel—no Trump supporter or conservative—expressed his profound concern about the state of journalism, and particularly reporting at the Times, during a March 7, 2019, discussion with Marvin Kalb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He stated, in part:

  We have things appearing on the front page of the New York Times right now that never would have appeared fifty years ago. Analysis, commentary on the front page. I remember sitting at the breakfast table with my wife during the campaign after the Access Hollywood tape came out and the New York Times—I will not offend any of you here by using the language but you know exactly what words they were and they were spelled out on the front page of the New York Times.

  So [President Trump’s] perception that the establishment press is out to get him—doesn’t mean that great journalism is not being done. It is. But the notion that most of us look upon Donald Trump as being an absolute fiasco . . . He’s not mistaken in that perception, and he’s not mistaken when so many of the liberal media, for example, describe themselves as belonging to the Resistance. What does that mean? That’s not said by people who consider themselves reporters, objective reporters. That’s the kind of language that’s used by people who genuinely believe, and I rather suspect with some justification, that Donald Trump is bad for the United States and they’re betting that the sooner he’s out of office, the better they will like it. Whether that happens by virtue of indictment, impeachment, or election, we’ll see. . . .

  We are not the reservoir of objectivity I think we were.11

  However, rather than accept responsibility for the low credibility in which the Times and other media outlets are held by the public, as a consequence of their own record and behavior, the Times and many other newsrooms conveniently blame President Trump for the distrust and cynicism they, themselves, have sowed with the citizenry.

  As discussed earlier, unlike certain of the president’s predecessors, Trump has taken no official governmental steps to silence news organizations or journalists. Although Sulzberger mentioned Jefferson, Kennedy, and Reagan as defenders of the press despite their complaints about it, a group in which Trump should actually be included for these purposes, Sulzberger omits that Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, and Obama did, in fact, use the power of the federal government against news outlets and journalists with whom they disagreed. Sulzberger’s rhetoric about Trump is dishonest and a deflection from his own failure as a newspaper publisher.

  Sulzberger is also less than forthcoming when describing the role of his journalists as truth seekers digging for the facts. In an April 25, 2004, opinion piece by the newspaper’s public editor, Daniel Okrent, the role of a journalist is described this way:

  With very few exceptions, the longer you’ve been here, or the higher you’ve risen in the organization, the less likely you are to believe The Times is, or should be, the paper of record. Metro columnist Clyde Haberman told me that in his 27 years at The Times, “I have never heard anyone inside the paper refer to it that way”; reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, an 11-year veteran, said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard my colleagues here use the phrase except rarely, in an ironic, almost self-mocking tone.”

  I think that’s because they recognize both the impossibility of fulfilling the role and the deadening effect it could have on the paper. Katherine Bouton, deputy editor of the paper’s Sunday magazine, said: “We understand now that all reporting is selective. With the exception of raw original source material, there really isn’t anything ‘of record,’ is there? . . .”

  Here’s another way of stating it: In a heterogeneous world, whose record is one newspaper even in the position to preserve? And what group of individuals, no matter how talented or dedicated, would dare arrogate to itself so godlike a role? If you rely on The Times as your only sou
rce of news, you are buying into the conceptions, attitudes and interests of the people who put it out every day. It cannot be definitive, and asking it to be is a disservice to both the staff and the readers. I mean no disrespect to The Times, but what discriminating citizen can really afford to rely on only one source of news? . . .12

  Of course, Okrent was right that news organizations, like the Times, have “conceptions, attitudes and interests of the people who put it out every day,” which speaks to the Times’ frequent and obvious interchangeable use of its news and editorial pages in service to the progressive ideology and the Democratic Party program, like so many media organizations these days. Moreover, he and the colleagues with whom he spoke acknowledge further that they are not in the business of simply reporting the news, for it would have a “deadening effect” on the newspaper. Thus they neither seek nor deliver objectivity in their news reporting. Its role is news with social activism, agenda-driving, interpretation, analysis, etc., as a siren for the progressive cause.

  Jim Rutenberg, a Times news correspondent turned columnist, is even more blunt. He asserts that if you are a journalist who despises Trump, as so many in the Democratic party-press do, and consider him some kind of a threat to the nation, you can hardly be expected to report objectively about him. On August 7, 2016, Rutenberg explained the mindset at the newspaper and the media at large, writing: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him? . . . [I]f you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, non-opinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable. . . . But the question that everyone is grappling with is: Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place? . . . It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”13