All Blog Posts from Public Eye

After years (decades?) of eyeing each other suspiciously, could the cold war between the media and the military be thawing? Two recent news accounts seem to suggest so.

Slate’s Jack Shafer writes that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates “adores the press”:

Pointedly criticizing the conduct of the department and offering himself as the anti-Rumsfeld, Gates thanked the press (that would be the Washington Post) for uncovering the "problem" at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "The press is not the enemy, and to treat it as such is self-defeating," he said.

While serving as president of Texas A&M University, he hit three very high free-speech notes at a September 2003 campus symposium on government-press relations, saying "there is good reason for journalists' skepticism and cynicism," "the press is the surest way for people to know the truth," and "secrecy is too often used as a cover for incompetence."

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Poor Bob Woodward. This was supposed to be his week, the kickoff campaign to sell his third book on the Bush administration and the Iraq war. Sure, it’s gotten plenty of attention already, including a prominent “60 Minutes” profile. But all of a sudden the Woodward book finds itself competing with a congressional scandal. The talking heads will be spending plenty of time arguing about which is likely to hurt Republican election prospects most – damaging revelations contained in Woodward’s book about an administration withholding a bleak Iraq situation from the nation or Mark Foley.

It’s too bad we’re unlikely to spend more time examining the Woodward book and dissecting its conclusions and, more importantly, its methods. In previous works, the Washington Post super-sleuth was hailed by Republicans for making the president and his team appear more serious, competent and intelligent than they are often given credit for. The worm has turned in “State of Denial,” however and now the author is locked in a war of words with the administration. Why the dramatic change in tone? Hard to say given Woodward’s legendary Watergate style that always has various folks pointing fingers at one another, issuing denials and arguing over accuracy. What’s very clear though is that there are agendas at work here. As Slate’s John Dickerson puts it:

In the renewed battle between the Bush and Clinton dynasties over who did more to kill Osama Bin Laden, the book offers a damaging account of a meeting between Condi Rice and then-CIA director George Tenet. In July 2001, Tenet rushed over to the White House to make his case in person about the rising threat, but Rice blew him off. Administration officials from Cheney to Rice have been throwing Tenet under a bus recently, blaming him for the faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They recite his line from Woodward's second Bush book, in which he said the case for weapons was a "slam dunk." Presumably, Tenet or his allies are using the third book as payback.

Should we be bothered by this matter-of-fact acceptance of axe-grinding and payback? Should it make us look at the charges made in a book with a little more critical eye? Does it invalidate any of his reporting – either in this effort or his previous books? What do you think?

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So as we predicted yesterday, editor Doug Clifton's column in the Cleveland Plain Dealer concerning the marriage of columnist Connie Schultz and Senate candidate Sherrod Brown – and how it would affect the paper's coverage of Brown – has garnered some strong reaction, according to Editor & Publisher.



Schultz told E&P that she "listened to about 200 calls. Most of them were from women supporting me. They were angry at the idea that I was supposedly parroting my husband's viewpoints."



E&P also got a quote from National Society of Newspaper Columnists President Suzette Martinez Standring. "The public loves to see a husband and wife supporting each other," Standring wrote in an e-mail. "Unless the husband, Sherrod Brown, is running for U.S. Senate and his wife, Connie Schultz, is a prominent columnist with The Plain Dealer. Then surely, the vultures will circle."



Another story we've been following is that of recent developments with the Pulitzer Prize. According to a press release, newspapers can now submit online material for consideration "in all 14 of its journalism categories." But as the Wall Street Journal points out, "The board [that awards the Pulitzer Prizes]…said it would continue to limit the competition to newspapers that publish a print edition, rather than allow entries by online-only publications such as Slate, Salon, MSNBC.com or the many blogs that proliferate on the Web. Some online journalists argued the board needs to further expand the scope of the Pulitzers, the most revered awards in American print journalism."



One of those online journalists is Salon editor Joan Walsh, who told the Journal that the people behind the Pulitzer "have to figure out a way to honor the very best journalism … and not merely protect the newspaper industry, which is kind of what this decision looks like."

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Bob Woodward has been taking a lot of heat from fellow journalists for his decision not to report his role in the CIA leak affair until recently and for criticizing the investigation on television and radio. On Friday, FOB (that's friend of Bob) Bill Powers came to Woodward's defense, offering up a psychological explanation for the media feeding frenzy:

…when the Woodward-Plame news broke, the reaction was inevitable. Like a younger child long overshadowed by the star sibling, the media establishment finally had something bad on Bob. Finally, an occasion to say, "Oh, yeah, all those gigantic stories, the ones that have run on the front pages of America's newspapers for decades and set the bar for Washington journalism, well, they weren't valuable or even all that great. Woodward just got them because he's a suck-up to power."



Of course, the reality of journalism is that everyone has to suck up -- request the interview, make the small talk, form the connection, try to pry out the bits of information that journalists sausage into news. It just happens that some of us -- or rather, one of us -- is a lot better at getting news, news so fresh and inside it astounds even the insiders.

On Thursday, Tina Brown wrote (in classic TB style) that "Media life seems to have turned into one long cannibal feast, a fratricidal Thanksgiving dinner minus the giving of thanks. No sooner have we finished dining out on roast Judith Miller with stuffing than we are ready for a nice, big slice of Bob Woodward pie." She also looked at the outcry from a psychological perspective:

All the ranting about Woodward's journalistic ethics, however, is a displacement of anger against the real sources, so to speak, of the public's misery. Unable to get rid of the real origin of abusive power, the media set fire to yet another messenger.



Woodward works from home! Sometimes Woodward's editors don't hear from him for months! Woodward gets to write books without taking a leave! Woodward knows everybody! Everybody knows Woodward! Time to send Woodward to the woodpile! It must be the crowning irritation to smaller woodland animals that once again the Big Beast knew the name of a prime leaker before anyone else -- and that, once again, he wasn't talking till he was good and ready.

Younger sibling…smaller woodland animals – I'm sensing a theme here. (By the way, does that make the press corps Alvin, Simon or Theodore? I can never keep them straight.)

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It's clear today that Bob Woodward's involvement in the CIA leak case – and his decision not to reveal that involvement for more than two years – is now, officially, the latest Big Journalism Scandal. Woodward's behavior is reminding some of another such scandal, the one involving former New York Times reporter Judith Miller: "There are a number of ingredients in this unsavory stew that weirdly echo the Judith Miller imbroglio," wrote Rem Rieder in The American Journalism Review.



When we came into work this morning, we couldn't help but wonder: How would the Times cover the story? Would there be hints of Schadenfreude in their coverage? (FYI: scha•den•freu•de: Noun. German. "Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.") Would the Times revel in the fact that the wrath of media critics is suddenly shifting elsewhere? Would the paper try to cast Woodward in the worst possible light – and in the process help people forget a little more quickly about their dear departed "Ms. Run Amok?"



It's impossible to render an unassailable verdict one way or another, of course. Decisions about what details to put in a story, and what language to use, require journalistic judgment calls, and there is no one right answer. We're not going to try to force one down your throat. What we are going to do, however, is excerpt these two passages from the Times piece today on Woodward, for your close inspection. The italics are ours.

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