Is It Time To Lose The Beat?
"I think that most reporters who have covered beats will tell you that over time, they create a store, repository of stories that they can't tell," says Wasserman. "I mean, what do you do when you're the White House reporter and you know that the president falls asleep during cabinet meetings? Well, you know, that's a terrific story. The American public would like to know that. And you also realize that your longevity as a White House reporter is going to be severely shortened once you've written that story."
If a story is big enough, of course, a journalist is usually going to tell it, blowback be damned. The Watergate story is a good example of a newspaper pressing forward despite the consequnces that could arise from doing so. But the problem spotlighted by Wasserman is a real one, and it's about more than just beats. One story can have consequences for a whole news organization: If the president doesn't like a CBS News report, for example, he might grant interviews to the other networks and leave CBS out in the cold.
Does that fact encourage news organizations not to run overly critical stories or dig too deeply into certain issues? Perhaps. At this point, I don't think this is a huge problem in politics, since large news organizations still have enough leverage (thanks to the size of their audience) that politicians cannot afford to freeze them out. It's a different story in areas like entertainment, however, where losing access to Brad and Angelina can significantly hurt a media outlet.
I do think it's fair to say that the proliferation of news outlets we've seen in recent years – and the gradual weakening of the big players that has come with it – is diminshing the leverage that organizations like CBS now enjoy. And if we hit a tipping point and politicians start ignoring those media outlets that displease them, it could make them more skittish about exploring certain stories.