By K. Daniel Glover | July 2, 2009
The big media news inside the Beltway today was the brouhaha over The Washington Post planning, and then canceling, dinner parties that promised deep-pockets lobbyists access to Obama administration insiders, members of Congress and even the Post's own editorial staff.
Bloggers across the political spectrum condemned the idea; the Post's ombudsman called the story a "public relations disaster"; the paper's executive editor said he never would have let his staff participate; publisher Katharine Weymouth reaffirmed her commitment to "our journalism and our integrity"; and the Obama administration had to answer questions about whether it had been invited to the "salons" and agreed to attend.
Everyone agrees, the Post blew it big time and will have an ethical cloud over its work for quite a while. Now that we have all that serious talk out of the way, let's have a little fun by imagining what kind of deals the Post might offer next.
Plenty of people are letting their imaginations run wild over at Twitter. There is even a new hashtag (#WaPodeals) to make all of the wisecracks (including the predictably vile ones from lefties) easily searchable. Here's a family-friendly sampling:
- For $10 million none of the Post's staff will say anything negative about Sarah Palin for a day.
- For $7,000, David Broder will write about the need for more bipartisanship. (Who are we kidding? He'll do it for an ice-cream cone.)
- For $10,000, WaPo will hire and fire Dan Froomkin again and let you watch.
- For $1,250, Al Kamen will consult the Obamas on their Christmas card before it goes to the printer.
- For $25,000, we'll have [Bob] Woodward write a book on you. For $250,000, it will actually be complimentary.
- Just $100,000 gets you a Date Lab with the governor/member of Congress of your choice.
- For $10,000, George Will will wear jeans for a day.
- For $30,000, Richard Cohen will fly to your house and yell at those annoying kids on your lawn.
- Hey, maybe for $20, WaPo will let me RickRoll its editorial board.
- How much does it cost to get my paper delivered before I leave for work?
Here's my contribution: For $1, the Post will hire the worst "conservative" blogger it can find as a token to counter the boatload of liberals already on the blogging staff.
Share your ideas in the comments section.
The Post scandal also spawned a great new word on Twitter (at least its new to me) -- "presstitutes." Any other words you would like to suggest for the media lexicon? Post them in the comments, too.
By K. Daniel Glover | July 2, 2009
Helen Thomas, the veteran White House reporter who thinks there aren't enough liberals in the press, reached her breaking point yesterday with the Obama White House's attempts to manage the news. She publicly scolded Obama's team for handpicking the questions at a faux virtual town-hall event on health care and then insulted President Obama by saying he is worse than Richard Nixon.
First the video from the daily White House press briefing, where Chip Reid of CBS joined Thomas in grilling press secretary Robert Gibbs about the town hall:
Now for Thomas' profanity-laced rant to CNSNews, where she complained that not even Nixon, the epitome of a bad president to liberal reporters from the Watergate era, tried to control the press like Obama has in his early days:
"What the hell do they think we are, puppets?" Thomas said. "They're supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them."
Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama's press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.
"When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you," Thomas said.
"I'm not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well -- for the town halls, for the press conferences," she said. "It's blatant. They don't give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame."
Yesterday's public airing of press grievances is the latest sign of trouble for Obama's stage managers, and Michael Wolff's essay in the July issue of Vanity Fair may have something to do with that. Like the "Saturday Night Live" skit that embarrassed Obama worshippers in the press into tougher coverage during the 2008 Democratic primary, Wolff's essay reminded reporters that every White House (and presidential candidate) tries to manipulate the press -- and that the Obama team is especially adept at doing so.
The media navel-gazing has been intense since then:
- Phil Bronstein of the San Franciso Chronicle scolded the press for being seduced by Obama;
- The Washington Post fired a liberal White House columnist who acknowledged that he was still trying to get his "sea legs" in covering Obama;
- Doug Bates of The Oregonian decried today's "gerbilism" as "soft and warm and cuddly, safe and timid, with no sharp teeth and no bite whatsoever";
- The establishment press in Washington went nuts when the White House gave liberal blogger Nico Pitney special treatment for Obama's most recent press conference;
- And Dan Thomasson of Scripps Howard News Service bemoaned the fact that Obama has "done a masterful job of keeping the Fourth Estate, if it even exists these days, off balance and frustrated.
The sudden burst of introspection is a good sign. Democracy benefits when the press is skeptical and feisty. But the media's outcry about Obama's management of the news isn't necessarily signaling an end to his presidential honeymoon.
For now, journalists are asking more tough questions about how Obama is selling his messages than about what messages he is selling. Their egos have been bruised because Obama is bypassing them as often as he is using them, so they are striking back at the bruiser.
When the media are truly tired of being controlled by Obama, they will stop whining like puppies about process, get off his lap and start acting like the watchdogs they are supposed to be.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 25, 2009
Vanity Fair better be careful, or it's going to be labeled as part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. In the past few weeks, the magazine and its online sister publication have taken aim at the liberal media.
The first jab came in an essay for the July print edition about the Obama White House's success in taming the liberal media. Michael Wolff called it a "perfect re-creation of a relationship between president and news media that has not been seen since the White House pressroom was a clubby place with reporters invited into the press secretary's office for whiskey and cigars."
The Web side of the Vanity Fair operation followed that lead a couple of days ago by publishing on its Culture and Celebrity Blog a piece that asked and answered why Americans hate the media these days. Writer Matt Pressman gauged the validity of each complaint.
"We're too liberal" was the gripe at the top of the list -- and Pressman confirmed that the complaint is extremely valid. On a scale of 1 to 10, he gave the media a 7 for its liberalism and then explained why:
It's true that the overwhelming majority of people who work in media vote Democratic. But most of the people reporting the news (as opposed to editorializing) make an honest attempt to hold both parties to account and not to allow their personal views to impact their work.
Liberal bias is a legitimate complaint, but it's vastly overblown, especially given the proliferation and power of unabashedly right-wing media outlets. Plus, reporters may sometimes overcompensate for their liberal leanings by giving excessive credence to certain right-wing arguments (see global warming, Iraq war).
The apologetic explanation doesn't mesh with the 7-point ranking, but admitting that "liberal bias is a legitimate complaint" is a good start. The overall grade is about right, too.
Some journalists, like CNN's Susan Roesgen, have scored a perfect 10 for bias, and the press collectively deserves a 10 for its coverage of President Obama to date. But based on my nearly two decades as a reporter and editor, most of it in the Washington press corps, I agree that most of my colleagues, most of the time, "make an honest attempt to hold both parties to account and not to allow their personal views to impact their work."
When they fail, it's often because they are blind to their own biases. Pressman's bias toward the Al Gore school of thought on global warming is a perfect example.
I don't doubt that he honestly believes liberal journalists have given "excessive credence to certain right-wing arguments" on that topic, but he's flat wrong. The reality is that too few journalists even care to be objective in covering the debate about climate change.
They, like Gore, believe that manmade global warming is "settled science," and they give no credence whatsoever to the scientists and politicians who disagree. They may include critics in their stories, but they work hard to marginalize those sources and don't report stories about science that contradicts their preconceptions about global warming.
Pressman deserves kudos for acknowledging what has long been obvious to most Americans -- that journalists let their liberalism seep into their reporting. Now he and the rest of the press need to take a closer look at how they report individual stories like global warming, or they're going to start moving the wrong direction on the scale, from a 7 to a 10.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 25, 2009
Critics of the liberal media have a new technological ally to help them direct their outrage about the journalistic lapses of specific reporters, editors or publications. The service is called act.ly, and it gives Twitter users a way to register their grievances by petition.
Earlier this year, I organized a tweet campaign against CBS News' Katie Couric for accepting a journalism award while a fellow journalist was harassed and manhandled for attempting to ask her questions. Twitter also played a role in forcing Playboy and Politico to retract stories that fantasized about raping conservative women. Act.ly, whose slogan is "Tweet Change," has the ability to make such efforts even more effective.
Take last night's Tweet-4-Truth campaign about ABC's "Obamercial" for the president's healthcare plan as an example. The conservative Twitter community could have used act.ly before the show to petition @ABC, @david_weston, @jaketapper and any other relevant ABC-types on Twitter to: make a tough questioner like John Stossel part of the program; invite critics of President Obama's healthcare policies to participate; and accept advertising from critics of government-run health care.
Conservatives complained loud and long about the special before it aired, but until the Tweet-4-Truth campaign and its #obamercial hashtag for Twitter were announced two days before the show, the online outcry was random and disorganized. With the launch of act.ly this week, conservatives can start building momentum earlier for future campaigns.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 24, 2009
The future of conservative journalism is looking brighter every day. The essay I wrote on the topic last week continues to spark feedback from people who have been or hope to produce investigative work from a conservative perspective.
I'm particularly encouraged to see state-based efforts. My essay mentioned the Goldwater Institute's hiring of an investigative reporter, and last week I read about a right-leaning news outlet in Colorado called Face The State that does investigative work. (Read my interview with managing editor Brad Jones.)
Today I learned that the John Locke Foundation has been on the same beat for more than a decade in North Carolina. It is a conservative pioneer in the field, publishing both news and investigative projects in the Carolina Journal.
Jon Ham, the foundation's vice president for communications, provided the history in an e-mail:
Our staff of first-rate reporters, which until about a year ago included Paul Chesser, whom you mentioned in your story, have over the years uncovered graft, waste and corruption in North Carolina government, leading to indictments that have sent several high-profile politicians to jail.
Quite often the mainstream media in North Carolina take their cues from the print version of Carolina Journal and carolinajournal.com. For instance, stories that we ran up to three years ago on some questionable activities of former Gov. Mike Easley formed the basis of a series that our capital-city daily newspaper ran just recently on the same subject.
We have a staff of five full-time editors and reporters, including Don Carrington, our chief investigative reporter. Don has built a reputation as a fair but dogged reporter whose calls elicit the kind of reaction in North Carolina that calls from Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" used to cause among the nation's most powerful politicians and corporate heads.
So, as you can see, in North Carolina at least, a conservative alternative is alive, well and growing.
Now all conservatives need is a way to coordinate the stellar investigative work its experts are doing across the country. The movement needs a good clearinghouse that could better draw attention to those efforts and perhaps, going back to the impetus for my initial essay, help distribute it through mainstream outlets like the Associated Press or syndication services.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 24, 2009
Doug Bates doesn't know it yet, but with the help of his daughter, the associate editor of The Oregonian has coined the perfect descriptor for journalism in the Age of Obama: "gerbilism."
Bates explained the genesis of the term Sunday in a commencement address to future journalists from the University of Oregon. As a child, his young daughter confused Bates' profession with the name of her favorite rodent in a school report about what her parents did for a living. "My dad Doug works at the newspaper," she wrote. "First he went to college to learn about gerbilism."
The punch line no doubt scored Bates a few laughs, but he segued into a serious point:
I've decided "gerbilism" is a pretty good word for what's been going on in the news media these days. Gerbilism is an apt term for something that's soft and warm and cuddly, safe and timid, with no sharp teeth and no bite whatsoever. Gerbilism, I've decided, is partly responsible for a lot of our nation's problems today.
Soft, warm, cuddly, safe, timid and no sharp teeth or bite -- yep, that sounds like much of the national media's coverage of Barack Obama.
Gerbilism is what you get when:
- A national network agrees to a one-sided special report on healthcare policy at the White House and even goes so far as to reject advertising with alternative viewpoints;
- A national news anchor at another network bows his head before the president;
And those are just a few snapshots from the month of June alone. That kind of coverage has been commonplace for more than two years now and shows no signs of abating.
The national press does have some shining stars -- like Jake Tapper of ABC News, who broke into journalism at the liberal Salon.com but who has earned kudos from conservatives for his aggressive and balanced White House reporting. The media as a whole also has had some shining moments of critical coverage. Even the hopelessly liberal New York Times reported this week that Obama has broken his repeated promises to make the federal government more transparent.
But those moments are rare -- and it's not exactly courageous to criticize Obama for actions that have turned liberal bloggers against him. The press corps needs to get a backbone when it comes to covering Obama, and quick.
Bates understands the consequences if they don't. He was right to argue that today's press corps is contributing to the nation's problems, and he was right to admonish the next generation of journalists to "please join the fight to keep shallow, fluffy, worthless gerbilism from further weakening American democracy."
Let's hope they listen. The country needs journalists who cherish their historical role as watchdogs, not those who shirk their ethical duty because they happen to see the world through the same prism as the current occupant of the White House.
UPDATE, 6/25: An addition to the bulleted list -- gerbilism is when you publish drivel that portrays the president as the standard of perfection.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 24, 2009
Last year during the height of the Democratic presidential primary, I produced a video mash-up that captured the media's infatuation with then-candidate Barack Obama.
The video features glowing broadcast segments, news clips and magazine covers about Obama set to the audio of The B-52s singing their 1980s hit, "Love Shack."
With ABC News headed to President Obama's love shack today for a one-sided special report on healthcare policy, the video seems even more relevant now than last March. Enjoy!
By K. Daniel Glover | June 22, 2009
Feedback to my column last week about "The Future Of Conservative Journalism" has included news about a couple of developments I wasn't aware of when I wrote it. One involves an investigative team in Colorado, and the other is about one nationally known conservative writer's quest to find funding for his investigative efforts.
The Colorado venture, ranked among "the best state political blogs" by the Washington Post political blog The Fix, is called Face The State. Here are the details from an e-mail interview I conducted with Brad Jones, managing editor of the site.
What is the mission of the site? Are you trying to fill a gap in coverage?
Face The State was created to expose government waste, fraud and corruption in Colorado state and local government, and to provide breaking and in-depth news on politics and policy. Given our small size, we can't expect to cover every politically relevant story in the state, but we do try to add to the body of available news especially given the recent period of media contraction.
FTS was conceived as a way to cover Colorado politics from a center-right perspective but to do so fairly. We work well with blogs and other alternative media, but there was and still is a great need for serious investigative journalism here.
What topics have generated the most interest?
Some of our most popular/influential stories have included:
-- An report revealing the chairman of the state House education committee wrote an e-mail saying school choice supporters deserved a "special place in hell." He resigned his chairmanship shortly thereafter.
-- A series exposing the governor's plans to unionize the state workforce. After our report hit and was picked up by other media, their strategy changed to a less aggressive proposal pursued by executive order.
-- After FTS reported an Aurora state House member had exposed himself to a female lobbyist after a fundraiser last year, the lawmaker in question resigned his seat within 24 hours.
-- An undercover investigation revealed a petition circulator for a 2008 initiative campaign was lying to voters in order to obtain petition signatures.
-- A report revealed the contents of leaked confidential memos [about] the inner workings of the Colorado Democracy Alliance, including a proposed campaign for unions to "educate the idiots" (defined as people with general equivalency diplomas, dropouts, and minorities.)
How large is the staff, and what kinds of stories are you pursuing?
We have three-person full-time staff. We also regularly feature work from contract writers, particularly our humor columnist and political cartoonist.
Colorado's legislature has a fixed-length session beginning every January, so for roughly five months we are immersed in legislative issues. In the summer and fall, we try to take on a mix of short- and medium-term investigative projects and campaign/political coverage. Our goal is to have at least one well-researched staff report per day.
How are you funded?
FTS is a private, for-profit Colorado corporation. We have a small number of investors who cover our operating losses while we grow. We also sell an increasing amount of advertising both online and on our two syndicated radio programs.
What is your operating budget? Have you sought grants from journalism or other foundations?
Our budget is less than $250,000 a year. We have not sought foundation or grant funding, but may do so in the future.
Do you have any distribution deals with newspapers, wire services, etc., for your content, or are you pursuing them?
We have a number of ad-hoc and regular content-sharing agreements with small publications around the state. The most recent is a new startup effort hosted by Denver-based Circuit Media (Law Week Colorado, StateBillNews.com) to share stories among area publications, including suburban weeklies, free dailies, and niche online and print trade publications.
The existence of a center-right investigative team in Colorado is encouraging because Colorado is one of the target markets for the Center for Independent Media, which is funded by George Soros' Open Society Institute and other donors. The Colorado Independent produces investigative reports in addition to covering the news.
Writer Michael Fumento also contacted me after seeing my essay to share his own thoughts about the future of investigative journalism by conservatives. His goal is to be among them, and he recently completed a grant proposal to seek funds for his investigative work.
Here's part of what Fumento had to say:
[E]ven at its performance peak the mainstream media often left crucial areas uncovered or poorly covered for various reasons, including a herd mentality, a widespread lack of analytic ability, and not least a strong liberal bias.
Unfortunately, the legions of right-center opinion writers and talk show hosts must usually rely on this same press for their raw material. Professional journalism also cannot be replaced by a so-called citizen media, including bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, "tweeters," and those who write for and publish any number of "e-zines" that pay only in exposure. For all the myriad faults of the mainstream media -- bias, sensationalism, laziness and sloppiness -- the citizen media suffer the same problems and then some.
The citizen media are also weakest in the area of investigative reporting because it requires training, experience, money and often tremendous time.
I see great value in the citizen media concept, so I don't entirely agree with Fumento on that score.
True, most citizen journalists lack the training to be good investigative reporters. But if conservatives are to counter the work of the growing "pro-am" journalism corps on the left, they will need a well-trained army of citizen journalists to complement the work of the few full-timers currently capable of doing the job. The right is so outgunned in the journalism game that it needs donors who are willing to fund both established journalists like Fumento and newcomers like those at Face The State.
Train the watchdog wannabes and give them a fair share of the investigative money, and they will contribute quality journalism. They also will be ready to serve as media mentors to the next generation of conservative investigators.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 19, 2009
The Washington Post has decided that it doesn't need a White House watchdog -- or at least it doesn't need liberal blogger Dan Froomkin to serve as the watchdog of a liberal White House.
Politico broke the news yesterday that the Post will not renew Froomkin's contract to write the column/blog hybrid "White House Watch" he has been writing since 2004, and the newspaper's ombudsman confirmed the rumor. Bloggers on the left are upset by the news, and even conservative blogger Ed Morrissey of Hot Air finds it a bit curious.
Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt said Froomkin's liberal bent "was not a factor in our decision," but he also said, "With the end of the Bush administration, interest in the blog also diminished." Those two points may conflict. If interest in Froomkin's blog diminished, a point that is being disputed, it's entirely likely that his political orientation was to blame.
I made that point on Twitter yesterday while backing the Post's decision. My tweets: "A liberal blogger watchdogging a liberal president is weak journalism. Sound news judgment by @washingtonpost. Now [the paper] should tap a conservative blogger to fill the void. It still needs a watchdog, just a skeptical one."
I say that as someone who used to be a Froomkin fan -- and not just because he once dubbed my former blog, Beltway Blogroll, one of "the essential Washington political blogs." Although I didn't always agree with Froomkin's critiques of the Bush administration, I appreciated his efforts to hold the administration accountable. Every journalist should be so committed.
But I quit reading Froomkin's column after he wondered aloud whether the press should approach President Obama with "the same skepticism" as it did Bush. The mere fact that Froomkin, a liberal, asked the question about a relatively conservative president undermined his defense years earlier that his job is to "watch the White House like a hawk" no matter which party occupies it.
Liberals like New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen and bloggers Glenn Greenwald and Oliver Willis insist that Froomkin has been watching Obama like a hawk just as he did Bush. But after perusing Froomkin's blog today, I'm not convinced.
Here's the message I got when I searched for any mention of Gerald Walpin, the supposedly "independent" inspector general who the Obama administration fired last week: "Having trouble finding what you're looking for?"
Indeed I am. And that's because Froomkin, who fancies himself a watchdog, has written nary a word about the politically motivated firing of a watchdog who dared to question an Obama supporter over his alleged misuse of federal grants.
The only time Froomkin mentioned the firing of Walpin (and not by name), he buried links to Associated Press and New York Times stories in a "Quick Takes" roundup -- and the Times story emphasized the White House's laughable and ageist defense of the firing.
That lack of coverage doesn't pass the watchdog smell test. It is unconscionable for Froomkin to have remained silent this long as the White House first fired and then smeared a man who actually has been watching the Obama administration like a hawk.
If you want thorough coverage of the IG scandal, you'll have to get it from The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is the target of the probe that got Walpin fired) or from conservative watchdogs like those at The Washington Times and Washington Examiner.
Froomkin's blog started down the path to irrelevance when he began "wrestling with" his watchdog role during the transition from Bush to Obama. His decision to all but ignore the IG scandal even as conservatives assumed the watchdog mantel hastened the blog's demise.
Odds are good that Froomkin will continue his blog as a solo venture or move it to another publication, perhaps a liberal outlet. (Can you say Huffington Post?) I hope he does -- if he is finished wrestling with his inner watchdog and ready to consistently be a thorn in Obama's side as he was for Bush.
By K. Daniel Glover | June 17, 2009
PolitiFact, a service launched in the summer of 2007 to either confirm or refute the claims of presidential candidates, has broadened its mission to include fact checks of pundits.
The idea has potential. Pundits across the political spectrum have a knack for spinning facts in their favor, so a niche definitely exists for a truly neutral observer to fill. PolitiFact also can make a legitimate claim to being just such an observer because of its ties to Congressional Quarterly. I worked at CQ nearly seven years after moving to Washington, so I know firsthand that there isn't a more fair, balanced and nonpartisan news organization in America.
But PolitiFact's record as a watchdog pundit is suspect so far. The ratio of fact checks is running almost 4-1 against right-leaning commentators, and a third of the nine critiques have been aimed at Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk radio.
PolitiFact has accused Limbaugh of one falsehood and one "barely true" argument but gave him a "mostly true" grade for his analysis of how Senate Republicans could use parliamentary procedures to block votes on judicial nominees. PolitiFact also has refuted claims made by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
The Web site adopted particularly harsh language for Scarborough, mocking him with the rhetorical question, "Do they pay Joe to make claims like this?"
Keith Olbermann, whose name has become synonymous with media stupidity, and Rachel Maddow, both far-left talkers on MSNBC, are the only liberals critiqued by PolitiFact to date -- and Olbermann earned a "mostly true" rating. That's too bad because there is plenty of punditry on the left ripe for the fact-checking.
Think of how much fun PolitiFact could have had when commentators like Olbermann and Maddow, as well as news hosts like CNN's Anderson Cooper, embraced distortions of the "tea party" movement earlier this year. And now that healthcare policy is at the top of the agenda, all kinds of bogus statistics are making their way into the media.
PolitiFact will be doing the public a great service if it casts a bright light on the erroneous facts parroted by journalists and commentators as they report on health care and other policies.
The good news is that PolitiFact is taking suggestions. So here's an admonition to the army of conservative citizen watchdogs already fact-checking the liberal media: Send your tips to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or tweet them to @politifact.
Let the watchdogs know when you hear liberal pundits spouting factually questionable data or telling outright lies. And if PolitiFact acts on your tip, link back to the story and spread the word to other bloggers and activists.
Conservatives will benefit if a neutral watchdog like PolitiFact does its job well in fact-checking commentators with large national audiences.
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