Sam Stein’s Question
A bunch of reporters and commentators are pointing out that President Obama made history at last night’s presser by taking a question from a Web-based reporter, Sam Stein of The Huffington Post.
WaPo’s Howard Kurtz says that “Obama made a bit of history by calling on the first blogger at such a session.” The Times’s Jeff Zeleny says the “decision signaled yet another shift in the ever-evolving news media landscape,” adding that it “will surely be discussed.”
It will be discussed. So it’s key to understand what the real innovation is here.
Some at the traditional news orgs are likely to see this decision as proof that the White House is determined to make use of an evolving Web-based apparatus of lefty news orgs that’s supposedly more committed to advancing a partisan agenda than to doing balanced journalism. Whatever the White House’s motives, the point is that some traditional journalists are likely to see the decision through the prism of their own presumed journalistic superiority.
But the real innovation isn’t in what Obama did. It’s in what outlets like HuffPpo are doing. Places like HuffPo and my alma mater, Talking Points Memo, are striving to demonstrate that it needn’t necessarily be mutually exclusive to care along with your audience what happens in politics — to have a predisposition towards one outcome or another — while simultaneously doing real journalism. This innovation isn’t wholly confined to the left, though even some conservatives admit that it’s more advanced on the liberal side.
Stein writes for an outlet whose predispositions are well known, but he produces fair, even-handed, thoroughly reported pieces. In other words, he’s a legit reporter. And so ultimately it’s perfectly natural that Obama took his question.
Indeed, despite HuffPo’s ideological leanings, Stein’s question about prosecuting Bush officials was one of the most confrontational ones asked. And it was more substantive and issue-based than those posed by some of the reporters from the big news orgs. Why that happened might be a good starting point if we’re really going to discuss this stuff.
I would also contrast the Stein question with those of Jeff Gannon or that Les guy who seems to have taken his place in the WH press room. This was no “how can I help you” nonsense. Instead, by calling on Stein, Obama let the world know that concerns from the left are legitimate even when they’re uncomfortable. Bush, by contrast, would dismiss ABC, CNN and NBC as hostile troublemakers.
right. Gannon is a very sharp contrast. I’d forgotten about him…
I was going to also raise Jeff Gannon, who wrote for an online news site with a particular partisan tilt, but glad to see it was already raised in the comments.
More importantly, we have to remember that a non-partisan press is a very modern creation. The American press has a long history of direct ties to political parties and view points. Sites like TPM and HuffPo are reinvigorating journalism in outlets with honestly partisan slants.
While it’s great that Sam Stein was able to ask a question last night, to me the more remarkable thing is the whitewashing the Beltway press corps and modern news establishment has done of the history of partisanship in their profession.
And Helen Thomas is back on the front row, right in front of the president, where she belongs. And she’s harassing Obama just like she has harassed presidents for all these years. Damn I love her and I love the Obama WH for putting her back on the front row.
Bush banished her to the back of the room. My heart soared like a hawk when I saw her there.
Greg
It seemed to me that Stein’s question probably posed the greatest difficulty for Obama and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
My rough answer is that the arguably more pressing issue of the economy is rather mechanical or arithmetic even if ideological and theoretical differences put people in different corners. Also, one can imagine the incredible number of man-hours his team and advisors have spent studying and discussing that issue – how to fix it, how to talk about it – thus his facility in answering questions on it.
But the Leahy proposal, and all its possible ramifications, run smack into tricky legal questions which have at their center a profound set of moral dilemmas. And moral dilemmas, taken seriously, don’t succumb to mechanical or axiomatic sorts of solutions.
Further, they are moral dilemmas which risk shaking up many citizens’ perceptions of their own nation and its character. Key mythologies surrounding America’s footprint in the world – the mythologies of exceptionalism – are what facilitate destructive militaristic adventures and have provide justification for a real national blindness to a long history of domination of (or interference in) other nations affairs.
These factors and some others related, I think, make the issue a huge field of landmines for even the most well-intentioned national leader.
Of course, there are legal/constitutional issues here too but what gives them heft are the moral questions. If Glenn Greenwald or Digby or Stein or the ACLU or any of us were blind to the moral issues here, our concerns would be much reduced.
Those of us old enough to have witnessed the process of reconciliation in South Africa understand how deeply wrenching such a process must be if done with integrity.
I think also this has some explanatory power as regards your question on how the blogosphere might be a different sort of creature than the modern press. Their stance of a sort of axiomatic aloofness – “we’ll first hear from a jewish person and then we’ll hear from Herr Goebbels” has an understandable rationale but it falls too easily to propandist manipulations and it far too often simply avoids the moral questions involved. Outside of Katrina, moral outrage has been pretty much missing in action within the press/media universe. However that has evolved, it is true. Many of us writing elsewhere do so, in large part I think, in order to fill that void.
I was going to also raise Jeff Gannon, who wrote for an online news site with a particular partisan tilt,
Jeff Gannon, the Kahk-headed man ****? He wasn’t a reporter. He sneaked in there on the strength of having a relationship with someone and I’d love to know who.
Poop. Meant to add one other thought re “balanced journalism”.
If one comes out of a highly ideological framework particularly with an evangelical fervor to forward that ‘one true’ political ideology, balance or even truthfulness aren’t key values or principles.
But if one comes out of a framework which is marked by a more tentative set of certainties, then the value of accuracy, truthfulness and balance usually become ascendant.
f one comes out of a highly ideological framework particularly with an evangelical fervor to forward that ‘one true’ political ideology,
There’s no “if” about it for a large number of reporters who ascribed to the idea coming out of journalism school, that God is in history and it is the Christian reporter’s job and the only job – to show God’s revelation through events. Now if that isn’t a rigid framework with which to view information, then I don’t what is. There was a group with a pledge that reporters signed, in which they promised to report on that basis – the basis of god’s manifestation in events, and in the reporting of those events. I used to have the link; I have forgotten now the exact name they called themselves. But this reported on a good 4 or 5 years ago now.
Tena
I hadn’t bumped into that, though I’m aware of similar initiatives in other spheres (the US military being an obvious example). If you find the source, please let me know.
If you find the source, please let me know.
I will if I can, but it’s been at least 4 years since that was briefly a story. It wasn’t talked about everywhere, either. Atrios was on top of that one. I’m not even on the same computer I was using then, but I’ll try my best.
This may be the organization but I can’t find the pledge that they were getting Christian reporters to sign for awhile and I don’t know if they still are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Journalism_Institute
Tena
As time and opportunity allow. But I’d send you a spiffy Canadian flag in return.
I mean, do I have to remind y’all that Jeff Gannon’s “journalism” career was based on a web site set up just for Jeff Gannon’s “journalism” career, and following links got you nude pictures of a tumescent Jeff Gannon.
Reporter for a blog my eye!
OK. That’s Olasky at work again. Thanks kindly. I O U one majestic maple leaf flag.
By adhering to their lazy and mindless concept of “balanced journalism,” traditional news orgs themselves contributed to advancing a partisan agenda. As time passes and the traditional news orgs prove so resistant to critically viewing Republican frames, it’s increasingly difficult to believe they do so by accident rather than by design.
Thanks Bernie. Sorry I am not as familiar with Olasky as you are – you obviously are more up on this than I am. I’ll just never forget finding out that there were journalists running around who see everything from a fixed standpoint.
Well – more fixed than the usual, anyway; or another layer of fixed viewpoint.
By adhering to their lazy and mindless concept of “balanced journalism,” traditional news orgs themselves contributed to advancing a partisan agenda.
Yep. I’ve only discussed this endlessly online for 6 or so years. The whole “balanced” thing is exactly the thing that has ruined American journalism.
This may be the organization but I can’t find the pledge that they were getting Christian reporters to sign for awhile and I don’t know if they still are.
Tena, is that the outfit with which NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Haggerty is affiliated? If memory serves me right, she blongs to an outfit committed to promoting Xtianity through journalism — and IMO it shows in her reportage.
Gregory – god you are a life saver and my new hero. Yes! Now I remember more about it – she was instrumental in this whole thing – the organization, the pledge, becoming a story.
Tena
Re Olasky… Joan Didion’s Nov 2, 2000 essay “God’s Country” is a wonderful piece on Olasky (it’s included in her book “Political Fictions”). You can get the essay here for a damned reasonable $3.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=13857
Tena,
I’m honored; I’ve admired your commentary since TPMEC. [/mutual admiration society]
As for Haggerty (sp?), I’d thought something was fishy with her reportage even before NPR dropped Kevin Phillips because, hey, they had Cokie Roberts to deliver the right wing point of view, and having the paleocon Phillips criticize Bush from the left apparently was just too confusing for them. NPR’s presentation of this obviously biased reporter as their religion correspeondent was alarming even before their continued refusal to acknowlege the conflicts in putting Fox News commentators Juan Williams and Mara Liasson ion the air as reporters.
The stupid thing is, NPR listeners are generally better informed. Did they really think we wouldn’t figure out this creeping right wing bias?
Sadly, NPR cleverly has us public radio fans over a barrel — NPR can always get another fat check from Archer Daniels Midland, but for us to withhold funding from them we have to stiff our local stations, and de-fund whatever quality programming the locals may provide. Nice racket “public” NPR has going for it, really.
Google,/A> has several links about Hagerty’s affiliations.
Sadly, NPR cleverly has us public radio fans over a barrel
Well, that’s partly because Lynn Cheney considered PBS her own little private project and managed to get the entire management riddled with her hand picked wingers.
Tena and Gregory
It looks like the lady has kept her nose fairly clean. It seems she’s an alum of WJI and Olasky was one of the crowd who set that up.
Some at the traditional news orgs are likely to see this decision as proof that the White House is determined to make use of an evolving Web-based apparatus of lefty news orgs that’s supposedly more committed to advancing a partisan agenda than to doing balanced journalism.
Even without considering Jeff Gannon, Bush called on Fox reporters constantly, so it’s not like this would be an innovation even if it were their motivation. Not that the traditional news orgs are likely to ever admit that (even though pretending Fox News is a legitimate news organization has done more damage to their reputation than anything to do with blogs.)
(And really, “balanced” journalism that assumes there are two equal sides to every story is a big part of the problem, but since you used “fair” and “even-handed” later on, Greg, I’ll presume that’s what you really meant.)