Worth reading from Editor&Publisher: A rare, frank self-assessment on GOP House coverage on cbs.com

[DeepModem Mom]

Should Media 'Call a Duck a Duck'? Top Web News Director Says Yes
By E&P Staff
Published: November 17, 2006

NEW YORK - Love it or hate it, you don't see this kind of this frank assessment and self-criticism in the "mainstream" media very often, even in this age of obsesssive Web opining and blogging. But Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBS.News.com, based in Washington, has raised eyebrows with a piece on his Web site titled, "Good Riddance to the Gingrichites."

Consider the opening: "This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the 'Contract with America' Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize.

"Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do.

"I'm not talking about the policies of the Contract for America crowd, but the character. I'm confident that 99 percent of the population — if they could see these politicians up close, if they watched their speeches and looked at their biographies — would agree, no matter what their politics or predilections."

Of course, he didn't stop there, saying of the GOP's 'iconic" leaders Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey: "Having these guys in charge of a radical conservative agenda was like, well, putting Mark Foley in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. Indeed, Foley was elected in the Class of '94 and is not an inappropriate symbol of their regime."...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003409701

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Dick Meyers: Good Riddace to the Gingrichites

From the website of CBS News
Dated Thursday November 16

Goood Riddance to the Gingrichites
By Dick Meyer

This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the "Contract with America" Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize.

Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do.

I'm not talking about the policies of the Contract for America crowd, but the character. I'm confident that 99 percent of the population — if they could see these politicians up close, if they watched their speeches and looked at their biographies — would agree, no matter what their politics or predilections.

I'm confident that if historians ever spend the time on it, they'll confirm my thesis. Same with forensic psychiatrists. I have discussed this with scores of politicians, staffers, consultants and reporters since 1994 and have found few dissenters.

Read more.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thank you, Jack Rabbit! nt

[Jack Rabbit]

11. You're welcome

:hi:

[rodeodance]

2. rec

[AnnInLa]

4. that is so aggravating

why does he thing they are not supposed to call a duck a duck? The Fourth Estate is supposed to be naturally adversarial to power because the citizens can't all be there personally to be watchdogs on that power. Great discussion last night on Maher about some of these things.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. And I wonder if they'll be less reluctant to use their adversarial nature...

when covering Democrats in power.

[AnnInLa]

12. Really.....our raising hell with them for not performing their jobs

will probably come back to haunt us...in spades.

[Jack Rabbit]

10. Editorializing in journalism

The purpose of a reporter covering a beat is to provide facts and let his reader/listener judge them. As often as I've said Bush is a war criminal, it is still something I really don't want to see in the headline on the front page of a daily newspaper. There, I would much rather see Bush approved waterboarding and sleep deprivation on detainees; I, the reader, can make up my own mind as to whether that's torture and whether or not that makes Bush a war criminal.

On the editorial page of the same newspaper, it doesn't me in the slightest to see Bush is a war criminal, or even Bush is the savior of America. That is where that kind of thing belongs.

On the front page, a duck is not a duck. It is a web-footed bird that swims in shallow water and says "quack". The editorial writers call it a duck.

The facts about where the members of the Republican class of '94 were coming from and even editorial judgments were few and far between. Their public behavior was reported as the acts of legislators, as it proper. One congressman introduced a welfare bill that would replace ADFC with TANF; that congress passed the legislation; that the Democratic president singed it. However, in the editorial page, there was little discussion of the real problems of welfare and poverty and of how this piece of legislation did or didn't address them. Nowhere did I see a statement like TANF is little more than ADFC with time limits and work requirements, except in things like something I wrote that the admins of DU saw fit to put on the front page.

Meyers' beef is over what the news reporters didn't do. They did not go into the background of these congressmen who were elected in 1994 to discover that most of them were professional political activists with little or no practical experience in anything. They were ideologues, which is to say idealists who would never understand why, if a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, one cannot just be drawn in the material world.

Of course, that might explain why all of their legislative solutions were a lot of moonshine.

It also explains why the Bush Administration failed in Iraq. The Bush regime is made up of a bunch of chickenhawks who thought they were too good to actually risk their lives to Vietnam from Communist tyranny (as they saw it); they have no practical experience in war, or even a peacetime military, no clue of what an army is or is not capable and, worst of all, feel no need to ask people who actually know what they are talking about from experience. The Powell Doctrine, which Donald Rumsfeld tried to disprove, was not just something Colin Powell received from Heaven on a stone tablet; it was the result of fighting in a lost cause and reflections of what went wrong. If there is any practical we've learned from Iraq, it is that the Powell Doctrine is valid. Rumsfeld failed.

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. You left out something

A duck can be a duck on A1 if someone else says so.

Pelosi: Bush 'a duck'

No problem. Send it.

"He said/she said" journalism is popular because it's cheap, it's fast and it's relatively safe.

But it ain't journalism. That takes time, costs money and might piss off people who buy ads, and that's anathematic to media managers.

[Jack Rabbit]

15. We get quite a bit of that

That is unfortunate. Politicians (or hack pundits acting as surrogates for politicians) throwing insults at each other isn't really newsworthy, but it fills up a lot of print and air time that could be better spent examining real issues.

For the benefit of lurking freepers, Democrats are as guilty as Republicans in this respect. But it is the media that chooses to spend so much time on this kind of nonsense.

[Morgana LaFey]

17. Your argument suffers BADLY for want of suitable

examples. The ones you provide simply don't work.

On the front page, a duck is not a duck. It is a web-footed bird that swims in shallow water and says "quack". The editorial writers call it a duck.

Bullshit. Calling a duck a duck is PRECISELY what's called for. That is exactly the level of objective reality that is required in decent reporting, as well as in life. Saying whether or not the duck should be where it is, or behaving in the way it is, OTOH, could be inappropriate editorializing.

Your example is SO bad that it actually serves as an example of what's been WRONG with journalism for years now: the reluctance to name a thing by its objective reality name or chracterization. And by God to me that means yes, name them WAR CRIMES, name it TORTURE and tell us the administration is lying through its collective teeth that they "are not breaking the law." OF COURSE THEY'RE BREAKING THE LAW -- it's TORTURE. That's objective reality. Or if you insist, it can be done thusly (for just one example out of probably hundreds): Most legal scholars consider this to actually be torture and thus consider various individuals in the administation including Bush himself to be war criminals.

The unwillingness to truly name something for what it is has been responsible for an absolutely appalling state of confusion on the part of the citizenry. We can certainly make some observations on our own ("Hmm, that sounds like a war crime to me,") but unless we hear SOMEONE give voice to our own thoughts, are likely to dismiss them or let the propagandists override our own common sense.

[annabanana]

6. huh.

They crawled under a rock 12 years ago, just climbed out, smacked their forheads and exclaimed "Of Course!.. Why didn't we see it all along?"

Beauty is as beauty does, guy.

[William Seger]

8. And the moral of the story is...

... don't wait for the Dick Meyers of the media to pull their heads out of their asses. It'll already be over by then.

[madmusic]

7. So now they are free to slam the Democrats!

Of course they see the light now.

[annabanana]

9. Oh that's just a coincidence...

I'm sure

[DireStrike]

14. While we're on animals... A snake that sheds its skin is still a snake.

Congratulations, Dick Meyer. You're only 12 years too late.

Will you call out the next administration for its follies and faults? Of course you will, because it will be a Democratic administration.

We'll look to you for insight and truthful reporting on today's events... in 2018.

[UTUSN]

16. K&R for better late than never, excellent article!!1 One more K&R to go!!1 n/t

[progressoid]

18. Just a couple days after the election I saw more than one "pundit"

talking about Newt running for Prez.

[nicknameless]

19. Yeah. They called the Dems "ducks" instead.

"I guess we really shouldn't have lied for 12 years to the American public."

This "come to Jesus" moment for gutless, immoral spinmeisters is far too little, far too late, IMO.

[Catrina]

20. Well that's nice, but it's a little too late

What this does is confirm how irrelevant they are now, because what he admits to, is that they covered up for a 'bunch of weirdos and hyporites'. We know that. It's not news anymore. The election results also demonstrate their irrelevancy. The public gave up on them and sought information elsewhere.

The question is why he is comfirming what is already a foregone conclusion? There are still plenty of those 'weirdos' left in Congress. Can we expect more honest coverage of them now?

His confession will mean nothing if the media does what it did last week, eg. Focus on Murtha's possible ethical challenges, while ignoring Boehner's even more questionable ethics.

Maybe they should consider hiring a few bloggers to help them with their research. I recall Katie Couric, eg, using the RNC memo on the Abramoff affairs when interviewing Howard Dean. She was slapped down by Dean, true, but not before she 'innocently' (or with willful ignorance'?) got in the talking point in the form a question (very recognizable tactic now) that the Abramoff affairs were 'bi-partisan'. She ended the interview with a promise to 'look into' it further. We helped her by sending her the research done online by many individuals, easily accessible, but to date, she has not made use of the information, nor corrected her erroneous charge.

However, he seems to be admitting that they had all the information necessary to inform the public, but chose not to do so. And I wonder if he thinks that this admission will restore some faith in the media? Well, no, I doubt it. They have a long way to go before that can happen.