There’s been much attention lately give to the growing number of journalists who have ditched their press passes and joined Barack Obama’s team, either during the campaign or in the early days of his administration. First there was CNN Middle East correspondent Aneesh Raman. Then there was ABC’s Linda Douglass. After election day, Time’s Jay Carney signed on as Joe Biden’s chief spokesperson. Peter Gosselin, a Los Angeles Times reporter and two time Polk award winner, left to become Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s chief speechwriter. This week, we learned that Jill Zuckman will leave the Chicago Tribune to work for former Illinois representative Ray LaHood, the Republican now serving as Obama’s transportation secretary.
Many prominent journalists have had careers or stints in government, both before and after becoming journalists—Walter Pincus, Charles Peters, and James Fallows, just to name three. But we live in a politically polarized world these days—one that is, perhaps more than ever, suspicious of bias stemming from party affiliation, but also one where the lines between journalist, analyst, pundit, and partisan grow blurrier by the day.
With that in mind, will (should) any of these ex-journalists ever return to journalism, and what sort of outlets would be eager to hire them? Was there a similar exodus of journalists to the Bush administration, and if not, why not? Is the newspaper industry’s financial crisis making government service more attractive? Does government gain from having journalists inside? Does journalism suffer?
Remind me again of the myth of the Liberal Media?
With the exodus of many journalists to Obama's administration, the "myth" is very real. \
And when will Newsweek or Time or The Dailies investigate corruption in the new administration? Before or after the prosocuters?
#1 Posted by JSF, CJR on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 02:00 AM
As far as ethics go, I don't have much of a problem with the whole government/journalism revolving door. Per conventional wisdom, a journalist's ability to tell a story fairly depends not on having no political opinions, but on being able to transcend those opinions for the good of a story. If we're going to operate according to that maxim, then, theoretically, the fact that they've held jobs in government--yes, even in these ultra-partisan times of ours--shouldn't compromise journalists' ability to produce fair stories if or when they return to the field. And, anyway, I'd much prefer that journalists be transparent about their own political attitudes and sympathies rather than attempt to obscure them under a veil of artificial ambivalence.
So that's theoretically. And pragmatically, I think, the revolving door holds up fine, as well: working in government can provide valuable experience/insights/sources/etc. that, should ex-journos want to return to journalism after a stint in the public sector, would make them better able than they'd be without that background to dig up stories and serve their audiences. Besides which, far be it from me to decry anything that keeps a journalist employed during these troubled economic times. (“I don’t think there would be this number if the industry were stable,” Jill Zuckman told Politico's Michael Calderone.)
It's culturally, though, where the whole government/journalism osmosis gives me pause. Because revolving doors don't just allow people to rotate in and out of journalism; they also tend to keep the same people in the rotation. Those people being, yep, everyone's favorite punchline: Washington Insiders. A porous border between government and politics ultimately ends up reinforcing the broader border enclosing Washington itself--the one that both fosters and fortifies DC's infamous cliquishness. The one that itself is notoriously non-porous. The easy fluidity between journalism and politics suggests, among other things, that those who enjoy power, regardless of the particularities of that power (political? journalistic? hey, it's all good!) are all part of The Club. And that, on the other side, those who don't enjoy such power--the vast majority of us, in the media and the country--are not. The whole thing isn't wrong so much as it's immensely off-putting. And sort of sad.
#2 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 09:39 AM
Thanks for at least acknowledging the phenomenon. Megan is good at identifying non-partisan reasons for it, but it's worth noting that Zuckman wrote her campaign pieces as if auditioning for a role in the Obama administration. I really think it would raise the credibility of mainstream media functionaries if they could bring themselves to acknowledge what they know from their own hearts and experience - that journalism, like academia, the arts, and other 'Mandarin' professions - skews Left in its vocabulary and narrative devices, and that this disposition can result in bad journalism. (Examples furnished upon request.)
#3 Posted by DrinkYourMilkshale, CJR on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 01:38 PM
@Drink: Well put. Though I don't think Zuckman is the best example of lefty bias to use here--she's a registered Independent who's working for a Republican secretary, and was deemed by McCain staffers themselves to be one of "the most accurate and objective" of '08's campaign-trail reporters--I take your point that journalism "skews Left in its vocabulary and narrative devices." I'd qualify that with a "sometimes"--and also with a "that is, when it's not skewing Right in its vocabulary and narrative devices"--but, still, it's a valid concern.
You also make a good point--to infer a bit from your comment--that the revolving door phenomenon compromises "the credibility of mainstream media functionaries." Looking at the tendency collectively, rather than at individual journalists who are engaging in it...I agree, it does (to some degree) compromise credibility. It's the cultural concern I mentioned above--the general cliquishness of the thing--combined with a concern about conflicts of interest. Which are largely about appearance more than substance...but, in some cases, appearances do matter. And revolving-door journalism--though, again, I don't think it's wrong in any ethical sense--simply looks bad.
#4 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 18 Feb 2009 at 02:35 PM
As long as they don't come back, I think it's fine that they're leaving. With the number of newsroom layoffs affecting my friends and colleagues, they are probably making a wise choice. However, I will have a problem with it if they try to come back. I have always been extremely uncomfortable with and skeptical of everything that comes out of the mouth of George Stephanopolous. How could we ever begin to believe that he is even remotely objective after being so strongly and publicly partisan in the political sphere? Take a job in politics - fine. Try to return to journalism when you've had enough or when your boss is voted out - not fine.
#5 Posted by MG, CJR on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 12:00 AM
Megan, thanks for your additions to the original discussion. We'll have to disagree on whether story selection and framing hardly ever skew 'right' ; political journalists seem to have seen a lot of movies, because a lot of what I see (particularly on the social/cultural issues that most strongly define who is 'liberal' and who is 'conservative') seems to be narrated as a liberal morality tale, with the particular story as metaphor, and fairly predictable good guys vs. bad guys. The NY Times still is the assigment editor for most national journalists, it seems to me, and the NY Times' reportorial staff is apparently loathe to challenge the politically-correct ideology of Mr. Sulzberger. (The single most disgraceful story of the 2008 campaign, you might possibly agree, was The Times' thinly-sourced front-pager alleging an affair between McCain and a lobbbyist. When The Enquirer does this sort of thing, as 2008 suggests, it is likely to be both (a) dismissed as trash by the MSM, and (b) more factually credible. Something for journalism critics to ponder.) The revolving door between journalists and political office-holders is decidedly on the Democratic side of the building; there is simply no Republican equivalent to Stephanopoulos or Chip Reid or Joe Lockhart or many others. It is perhaps telling that Obama's campaign guru, David Axelrod, is a former Chicago political journalist.
The idea that some companies or industries have an 'institutional culture' is a commonplace, and in journalism that culture, following icons like Edward R. Murrow, is strongly left-leaning in priorities and values, and pro-Democratic.
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 19 Feb 2009 at 01:45 PM
Big Media skews liberal? Mark, ever heard of Roger Ailes? Tony Snow? David Asman? Pat Buchanan? Bill O'Reilly? Brit Hume? Fred Barnes? And, not to just pick on Fox News, ever check out Ted Koppel? Or Sam Donaldson? On the morning pundit fests, opinion ranges from the far right to, sometimes, the middle. "Leftists" need not apply. The left-est these shows ever get is someone like Juan "Clarence Thomas is my pal" Williams.
This matters. Not because it's not fair to systematically keep off the air and out of sight actual leftists, but because leftists sometimes--just sometimes, but arguably way more often than the denizens of the AEI--are correct.
When Judith Miller (oh so left!) of the (lefty) NYT was writing nonsense about Iraq's WMDs, leftists were standing on the sidelines, hooting and screaming it was bogus. Did anyone notice? Did anyone listen? No.
Look back 10 years to the passing of the Gramm Leach Bliley law, overturning Glass Steagall and legalizing the CitiGroup we know and pay trillions to underwrite today. Nobody on TV or in the MSM had anything critical to say about this historic abdication of the government's regulatory responsibility. Only a few "leftists" thought it might be bad. People like Jane D'Arista of the Financial Markets Center could have explained in sensible detail why it was a bad idea. No one called her then, and no one calls her even now that her predictions have come true.
So listen up, Mark: the problem isn't, never was, "liberal bias." The problem is that U.S. journalism reveres the powerful, goes to work for the crooks--in D.C. and in Manhattan--and never bothers to interview the people outside of the cocktail circuit--the people who actually know something about, say, over-the-counter derivatives, counter-intelligence operations, the nuts and bolts of narcotics trafficking, the oil trade, the workings of hedge funds, the mortgage banking system, etc.
Koppel spent decades on ABC putting Henry Kissinger on the air every other day and seldom (if ever) questioned the man about his motives or interests. "Leftists" everywhere thought this was bad form, and bad journalism, but to my knowledge no one outside of the left's narrow precincts remembers or cares.
Just like no one but "leftists" remembers who had the WMD thing right, or who knew ahead of time that bank deregulation was moronic.
That's how much power "the left" has in American journalism.
When the "conservatives" at Heritage and AEI start getting stuff right, and getting ignored--instead of vice-versa--then you'll have cause to complain.
#7 Posted by ed ericson, CJR on Sun 22 Feb 2009 at 03:28 PM
Ed, Good, vigorous case you make there. But Fox News stands out because it is such an exception. You make some strong arguments about the coverage of economic policy and the reasons for it. But what divides this country in terms of politics has at least as much to do with social and cultural issues. Economic status is no longer as good a predictor of voting habits as are cultural issues. And on these issues, the big newspapers and broadcast networks and two of the three cable news outlets and the two big newsweeklies and NPR and PBS and . . . I could go on . . . are overwhelmingly to the Left in the issues that are highlighted and the way they are framed. (The current hysteria over the NY Post editorial cartoon, illustrates this. I guess the really uptight and easily shocked people are now mostly on the Left.) Your analysis doesn't take into account that the richest people and districts are also the most 'socially liberal' elements of our society. There's no room for the outside-the-box thought that the mainstream media serves the interests of the well-to-do not only in economic coverage, but also social-issue coverage. It's the middle which gets squeezed.
Some elements of 'the left' will not acknowledge more moderate people on the left side as ideological kinsmen. I can assure you that 'the right' is not hallucinating when it regards The NY Times or, for that matter, Ted Koppel, as an opponent in straight-up, Dem vs. Repub terms. Most people have a good sense of when they are being singled out, patronized, condescended to. Some of what you say is kind of like arguing that there is no truly 'conservative' news source, because there isn't a single pro-monarchist news outlet. We have seen the fall of the socialist bloc in eatern Europe, the rise of China and India after they deregulated much of their economies, and the protracted stagnation of Japan and much of western Europe in spite of all the regulations an American leftist could wish for, just in the past generation. There were understandable reasons why leftist economic policies fell out of favor in the 1980s and 1990s, whether you agreed with them or not. Hint: the states in this country with the highest tax rates and stiffest regulations on economic activity over past decades have been the states in relative stagnation to others, due to job losses.
BTW, Judy Miller's journalistic record (and personal life) were hardly conservative before she was pilloried by the Left for her WMD coverage. I well remember her google-eyed covered of the big anti-nuclear rally in NYC in the early 1980s, from a personal memory . . . She later lived with Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin and then married Jason Epstein, one of those affluent urban people with left-leaning political views. Miller ran with a story that she probably thought in good faith was accurate. The Times' staff has been caught out in much worse ethical breaches which were owed to left-leaning social views - examples furnished upon demand, though you realize that a post is not a research paper.
#8 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 23 Feb 2009 at 01:54 PM
Thanks for the reply, Mark. I appreciate your taking the time. But I don't think "social issues" have anything important to do with the politics that matter here and now. You weren't specific, so I'll grab one out of the air: abortion. For 35 years the "abortion debate" has "divided" god-fearing "conservatives" from godless liberals, and the Republican Party has drawn succor from these heartland Americans. And for all those years, amid all that bluster, all those promises from candidates, Republican and Democrat, nothing's changed. Roe v. Wade stands, abortion is legal, and the "debate" revolves around fringe stuff like access to abortion facilities in Orlando Florida and bans on "partial-birth abortion." Meanwhile, while the denizens of the megachurch cheer Newt Gingrich and light candles celebrating Ronald Reagan, the median family wage stagnates. The CIA facilitates the importation of cocaine to the United States. The country's industrial base is unbolted and shipped to Mexico. Leftists complain. Right-wingers cheer, and the centrists in the media pretend it's all inevitable.
#9 Posted by ed ericson, CJR on Mon 23 Feb 2009 at 09:47 PM