Jim Fallows has written a book about the Washington press corps and clearly has touched some nerves.
Mild of manner and swift of pen, Fallows is Washington editor of the august Atlantic Monthly. He is author of provocative works on a paper company’s clout in a Georgia town, the military’s short-sighted obsession with fancy military hardware, and on Japanese culture and its government-driven economic clout and efficiency (which is proving as mighty, and efficient, as he warned).
Now comes “Breaking the News,” an acid critique of the media, in particular the elite members of the Washington press corps. It argues
that they have generally been corrupted by TV appearances and speaking fees, have no sense of public responsibility and, more important, replace bonafide skepticism with a haughty, lazy elitism that too often fails to provide adequate assistance in sorting out issues.
“Are we sometimes too insulated and enthralled with the sound of our own voices? You bet. Do I have to be lectured about this by a sanctimonious fraud?” Newsweek political writer Howard Fineman said about an author he contends repeated an errant claim about his counseling the Clintons on schooling for Chelsea.
Fallows mentions me, too, albeit favorably, while appropriating material (some with erroneous or no attribution) from this column– mostly on reporters raking in speaking fees.
However, Fallows, who is himself a regular pundit on National Public Radio, suggests that my appearance on that same CNN show with Fineman may be crossing a Rubicon of virtue. We disagree, if politely.
OK, put the self-important, inside-industry babbling aside. When I asked him Friday why anybody in Naperville should care about a book praised (too lavishly) by the New York Times and Washington Post and bashed (too harshly) by the New Yorker, he replied thus:
“They should care because over the last 10 years they have been unhappy about the press in a way they may not be able to put a finger on. “
His book tried to put a finger on it, discerning what he deems a “shifting of the whole concept of news to reflect both an insider culture and insider habits of mind that are convenient for people whose lives are bound up in the game of politics and are separated, by distance, money, culture and inclination from the real world effects of all that they talk about.”
“The job we are supposed to do,” he said, “is give people information they need to make sense of the world. Nobody can collect all the information they need, about crooks or their sons going to Bosnia. It is thus an important job we do but (there is trouble) if there is a sense that we can’t be believed because we are only acting to suit themselves and line (our) own pockets.”
Fallows, 46, is a former Rhodes scholar and Ralph Naderite who has always been more a policy-wonkish journalist, getting his start with a bastion of skeptical young liberals at the Washington Monthly. There, he generated a flurry of attention by writing a piece on how he and other liberal chums at Harvard avoided the Vietnam War draft.
Precocious and bright, at age 29 he was briefly the chief speech writer for President Jimmy Carter. He quit after a few months and gained attention with a harsh critique in the Atlantic of the Carter White House, deriding “a combination of arrogance, complacency and insecurity.”
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There are pinches of piety and whininess that creep into his latest work. Further, while skewering high-profile reporters, he doesn’t cite the responsibility of their bosses. They, after all, sign the paychecks and avert their eyes as they sometimes practice situational ethics toward their big-gun employees.
But this is an important effort, notably as it raises the disputed notion of “public journalism,” by which the press would somehow do better and be more sensitive to citizens.
His central example is coverage of the botched health-care proposals of the Clinton administration. He admits there were fine, substantive media analyses. But he insists that too much coverage left consumers in the dark by unrelenting emphasis on political wrangling: whose plan was outmaneuvering whose at any moment.
As for changing all this, he suggests this: Rather than, say, write a tactical tale of Newt Gingrich’s plans to derail President Clinton’s educational spending plans, instead inspect the way parochial schools work and whether their standard of discipline is possible in public schools.
If during a primary race, a candidate declines to fork over his position on a particular issue–holding it back for use in the general election–one should force the matter. Embarrass him until he does, on the mere fact that he is keeping his position secret until he can maximize its use.
“I’m not saying you should moronically give people what they want,” Fallows said, alluding to the penchant of clueless editors to gain bureaucratic cover by relying on focus groups to discern what readers crave.
But, he argues, if the community’s underlying values involve sensitivity to the environment, race relations and impact of economic growth, one should steer coverage toward those issues. In covering a local race, spend less time handicapping advertising strategies and more on finding how the candidates’ views fit those key values.
Fallows holds up the Wall Street Journal’s front page as a way to go. He notes how in two narrow columns of news summary it condenses much of what consumes general interest newspapers. Then it uses most of the space to explain what it deems important and interesting.
But, of course, even then there’s no assurance of success.
Being misinformed can, at times, be the public’s own fault, he concedes. “We can’t be too congratulatory about ourselves, but this is also partly the fault of a public that prefers to watch `Geraldo.’ “
PAC HYPOCRISY
Thanks to a lobbyist, I have the following:
At a private meeting last week of the National Association of Business PACs, the folks who oversee political action committees were steaming. They’re tired of politicians beating up on them and an allegedly corrupt campaign finance system, and still taking their money.
The association compiled a dandy analysis of all anti-PAC legislation introduced in the current Congress–and then juxtaposed authors and co-sponsors of each piece of legislation with the amount of PAC money they took in the first six months of 1995 (latest available data).
For example, Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) introduced a bill to bar House candidates from accepting PAC money but he has taken $6,600 in PAC funds. That’s a pittance compared to Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.), who’s signed on to two PAC-killing proposals but took in $108,800, according to the records given to me.
The now-legendary Republican House freshmen, who came to town to do away with all this terrible stuff, are feeding from the trough like there’s no tomorrow.
For example, Idaho’s Helen Chenoweth took in $66,337 from PACs, Indiana’s David McIntosh took $99,403, and the troubled Enid Waldholtz of Utah took $34,450, all while urging elimination of PACs or strict limits on them.
COKIE WATCH
Isn’t this precious?
A rendition of Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page” will be performed (read aloud, actually) Monday at the Arena Stage here in a benefit for the theater.
Actor Stacy Keach, as Walter Burns, will be part of the cast as will Clinton administration Cabinet members Robert Reich and Donna Shalala, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), Sen. John Chaffee (R-R.I.), retired House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois, who’ll play the mayor, and Moseley-Braun, who’ll sing, “My Kind of Town.”
And cozily alongside this assemblage of the political establishment, one will find the media establishment, including former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Sam Donaldson of ABC News and New York Times bureau chief R.W. Apple Jr.
And Cokie Roberts of ABC News. She plays Peggy Grant.
Sweetheart, give me rewrite. I want to gag.