Perhaps nothing is more demoralizing, though, than the sense that journalism’s most groundbreaking investigations did not yield the kind of public accountability, congressional investigations, and reform that past eras have seen—that the system of democratic checks and balances, of which the press is only one part, is broken. Most of the abuses of the last eight years were pursued and exposed not by Congress, but by the press. “I have found that the stories which most anger and haunt journalists are not necessarily the ones with the most violence,” says Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. “They are the stories in which we felt our intervention to have accomplished nothing. What’s really striking with the Risen story is precisely that sense of powerlessness: they committed this great act of journalism, and broke a story of a violation of federal law that raises fundamental questions about abuses of power in our society. And then the great institutions of society don’t respond, but instead turn around and say, ‘Fuck you.’ That is a huge invalidation of all the work, and further betrayal of our sense as journalists of what’s right.”
The system did not work, and is still not working. When the stories on black-site prisons and domestic wiretapping broke in late 2005, the Democrats were still a minority in Congress, and Republicans largely protected the administration from scrutiny. But even after the Democrats won majorities in the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, their interest in high-profile investigations of controversial administration behavior on the national-security front remained muted. Part of the explanation, says Dana Priest, who wrote the Post’s CIA-prison story, is that the information in her piece and the Times’s NSA report is “all classified. For an informed member of Congress, if they had a secret briefing and read my story, they are still hamstrung from discussing it, because they had the secret briefing.”
But past instances of journalistic revelation of secret government programs also involved sensitive or classified information—the Pentagon Papers, for instance, or the story in the 1970s about how the federal government was engaged in domestic spying, which led to the Church committee hearings in 1975 and the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requiring court warrants for domestic surveillance. So what’s different today? Why is fear of discussing press accounts of classified programs, even among powerful members of Congress, seemingly greater now than in past eras? “What’s different now is that they are still partly worried about looking soft on Al Qaeda,” Priest says. “Al Qaeda got put in such a bogeyman box. And everybody is afraid they could be accused of being soft on terrorism. That is the death knell for people.”
BUSH was Lucy holding the football to the DEMS being Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown always falls for it, and winds up on his back, EVERY TIME. That the thought that Bush/Rove/Cheney wouldnt spy on political enemies is like being "shocked" that gambling is going on in Casablanca...
"One congressional staffer, who works on national-security issues and who asked to speak on background, suggests that one reason Congress has not been more aggressive in following up on the domestic wiretapping story, for instance, is that there was a sense, even among many Democrats in Congress who had been briefed on the program, that the administration was pursuing these programs not for “nefarious reasons, but to catch bad guys”—that it was not using the program to spy on domestic political enemies, for instance, as had occurred in the 1970s."
#1 Posted by Mike, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 02:49 PM
Could be Congress inaction was due to the NSA having the goods on them. When you think of it in the context of Pelosi's "impeachment if off the table" stand, it sort of makes sense.
#2 Posted by WestCoastLiberal, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 03:34 PM
Could it be that since the appropriate congressional committees and leaders was briefed on these and approved them they dont want to dig up the past?
#3 Posted by Horace, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 03:54 PM
I have always, always felt that there was strongarming and blackmail going on - I am so glad to finally see something to validate that suspicion.
#4 Posted by Xtina, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 07:48 PM
The reasons why the “great institutions of our society” said, “Fuck you” are many. I offer but a few.
With a number of exceptions (you know who you are), the news media early on not only allowed the Bush administration to control the message, they also willingly allowed themselves to be used to propagate it. The media allowed themselves to be intimidated too. Rather than be primarily concerned with reporting the news, reporters became overly concerned that reports critical of Bush and Bush policies would get them “kicked off the plane” or frozen out of press conferences.
By their capitulation, the media granted the government weeks, months & years head start to condition public response. A nation gorged on “24”-style terror porn and drunk with patriotism was told “We don’t torture but if we did it was to save American live ‘cuz of a ticking time bomb.” This position was repeated largely unchallenged ad absurdum by the news media. Is it any wonder that when informed of waterboarding 2-3 years later the majority of American public was ambivalent at best?
From Bush on down that administration was dismissive of and disparaging to all reporting outside of Fox News, TNR, Rush Limbaugh, etc. In a time of war, Bush & company’s distrust of the media was palpable and contagious. Later, breaking stories on torture & wiretapping were treated as “unpatriotic” or “treasonous” by the administration and conservative media types. That the NY Times (and possibly others) had previously sat on these stories fueled distrust of the media across the political spectrum.
Is it any wonder we said, “Fuck you”? Because, excepting Dana Priest, James Risen, Eric Lichtblau et al, the mainstream media sure fucked us.
-AF
Andrew Sullivan Is A Fraud
#5 Posted by Anacher Forester, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 07:50 PM
"...by and large the public didn’t seem terribly interested in the issue." -- and yet the author acknowledges that since 9/11 (and in truth for decades before) the press was in the tank for Bushco and government in general, particularly US intelligence organizations, cf "the Mighty Wurlitzer".
I don't believe that the public "didn't seem terribly interested." I got the impression that the press didn't seem terribly interested and so helped bury the story. How could the public seem to have a voice on the matter if the press was deliberately ignoring issues that were of great importance to the public? In other words: The press is supposed to represent the interests of the public, not be, at best, a weathervane to it.
And when these intrepid reporters finally challenged Bushco, where were their bosses? Where was the Times' management for the (election) year that it sat on the spying scandal? Where has MSM management been in publicly defending its reporters? In the tank for or terrified of Bushco, as good corporate lackeys would be.
Congress may well have been scared to take on these issues for fear of being called weak on terrorism. Congress is mostly invertebrate at the best of times, but perhaps they realized that the MSM would take these allegations and amplify them, not investigate them.
To sum up: Why are these MSM reporters complaining about the weakness of the MSM when the MSM has deliberately weakened itself?
#6 Posted by NoOneYouKnow, CJR on Thu 22 Jan 2009 at 08:23 PM
Nice analogy but I would say that it was the American People that were playing the role of Charlie Brown, fooled again by the rhetoric of fear and flag waving. Bush took advantage of the war to make any allegation of wrongdoing be treated as treason. That's what you get when you make the bully the king of the school yard.
#7 Posted by Al Budney, CJR on Fri 23 Jan 2009 at 08:07 PM
Right, Laura, but don't forget that most of those years the Republicans were the majority in both houses. The Dems (Waxman, Conyers) attempted to hold minority-party hearings, if you will recall. The Republicans of course weren't going to have hearings about their own party; they were in on it. I don't give the Dems a total pass, because they didn't do very much after 2006, out of fear or complicity. But it isn't fair to blame Congress and exempt your profession from responsibility.
People WERE terribly interested. It was Washington that was "not interested"; specifically the mainstream press that was "not terribly interested." We in the public who WERE "terribly interested" formed around the blogosphere in its infancy to get information and form groups to lobby your colleagues to GET terribly interested. You in the mainstream media were our only hope. And how were those others who were no "terribly interested" supposed to know there was something in which they should be "terribly interested", without the mainstream press? That's their job.
I, of course, recognize the work of the courageous few, Priest, Risen, Lichtblau, you, and a few others, with whom we would know less than we do, and I commend you for your work. But don't let your less courageous colleagues off the hook like that.
#8 Posted by James, CJR on Sat 24 Jan 2009 at 07:00 PM
You know, one of the good things Obama is doing is not using euphemisms for the word "torture." It's a good lead to follow.
#9 Posted by JayAckroyd, CJR on Sun 25 Jan 2009 at 03:04 PM
Interesting that the "public good" was to destroy a presidency in time of war and usher in a new presidency that has openly stated that they will end the war at all costs. The press is to REPORT the news, not CREATE IT. The press has conveniently forgotten what this war on terror is all about and they will sacrifice the men and women that are fighting for the cause. The press is all about selling a story and their biased view of the "truth", not the veracity of their source.
#10 Posted by Dave, CJR on Tue 27 Jan 2009 at 10:57 AM
While there were a few fulminations on some liberal blogs that congressional Democrats (including then-Senator Barack Obama) had voted with the majority of Republicans to pass the new foreign intelligence surveillance law that gave retroactive immunity to the telecommunication companies, by and large the public didn’t seem terribly interested in the issue.
I am astonished and horrified to read this characterization from someone whom I've regarded as one of the best reporter/bloggers around.
"a few fulminations on some liberal blogs"?
Obama's June 2008 repudiation of his promise in Wisconsin before the primary there to block telcom immunity ignited a political firestorm on _all_ of the biggest liberal blogs and spurred the creation of a 'Get FISA Right' group on the campaign's website that grew quickly to 30,000 members.
As for reporters being the ones for whom the issue hasn't gone away: the 'Get FISA Right' group has stayed organized, continuing to add participants, and recently succeeded in making accountability for the lawbreaking involved and a full investigation into what happened one of the top ten questions at the Obama transition's change.gov.
The supposed lack of interest among the public is inseparable from the way in which reporters covered (or failed to cover) the Bush administration's lawbreaking, Fourth Amendment violations, and Congressional reaction.
Risen, Lichtblau, and a few others have done decent reporting. Most of the rest of the press and media outside blogs: NOT SO MUCH.
#11 Posted by Nell, CJR on Tue 27 Jan 2009 at 02:36 PM