Bush, Blair, And The British Press
Knoller's comments elicited a flurry of angry responses from our readers. Typical was this comment from "sksnedegar": "The media's job is not to publicize lies the powerful tell; that is the job of a propagandist. The media is supposed to discount and dismiss the lies in favor of the truth. When do you intend to start doing that?"
I thought of that exchange as I read about yesterday's joint press conference between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is stepping down amid low approval ratings tied to his support for the war. As Mike Allen notes, "When [Bush] and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom walked into the sunny Rose Garden just before lunchtime on Thursday, most of the foreign reporters stayed in their seats, while the White House press corps followed tradition and stood in respect."
In Britain, tradition dictates that journalists only stand for the Queen, the official head of the government. But, Allen notes, the decision not to stand yesterday was, according to "some of the scribes," "partly an anti-Bush thing."
And then there were the questions -- which Allen called "blunt, even rude" -- prompting Bush to at one point sarcastically quip "that's a lovely question" to a British reporter. As Dana Milbank notes, Bush also suggested that a BBC questioner was "like trying to do a tap dance on [Blair's] political grave, aren't you?" Blair, in his typical style, said to Bush: "You had kind of forgotten what the British media were like, hadn't you?"
It would be easy to conclude that the British press are more confrontational and challenging than their American counterparts, and, therefore, superior in the eyes of those who agree with Moyers. That may be true. But there are a few factors worth noting when weighing the differences and similarities between American reporters and their British counterparts.
The first is that, with his current approval rating hovering under 30%, Blair is probably the weakest he has been in his tenure as Prime Minister. (President Bush's approval numbers are much the same.) As we've seen in the former colonies in recent years, it's a lot easier for a reporter to challenge a leader when he has most of his country behind him.
Then there's the fact that British reporters, at least on the print side, are expected to be partisan. If you're from a conservative newspaper, for example, you're supposed to hit a liberal leader hard when you ask a question. Our American pursuit of objectivity is far less prized across the pond, which allows journalists to ask the kinds of questions that would have Drudge and Media Matters readers screaming "bias!" over here.
I also have to wonder how much of the tone taken by British reporters is cosmetic – or, to put it less charitably, grandstanding. Asking Blair what he would say to those who believe he should have resigned sooner, as Adam Bolton of Sky News did, is not really making an important point or poking holes in an erroneous assertion – it's just being a jerk. And it's not the kind of example I would cite if I wanted to make the case that British reporters have a thing or two to teach their colleagues in America – or if I wanted to give an example of journalism at its finest.