By Walter Pincus
pincusw@washpost.com

Courage in journalism today takes all the obvious, traditional forms -- reporting from a war zone or from a totalitarian country where a reporter's life or safety are issues. In Washington, D.C., where I work, it's a far less dramatic form of courage if a journalist stands up to a government official or a politician who he or she has reason to believe is not telling the truth or living up to his or her responsibilities.

But I believe a new kind of courage is needed in journalism in this age of instant news, instant analysis, and therefore instant opinions. It also happens to be a time of government by public relations and news stories based on prepared texts and prepared events or responses. Therefore, this is the time for reporters and editors, whether from the mainstream media or blogosphere, to pause before responding to the latest bulletin, prepared event, or the most recent statement or backgrounder, whether from the White House or the Democratic or Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Of course, I'm not talking about reporting of a bomb blowing up in a restaurant, soldiers being shot, police caught in a firefight, a fire, an accident, a home run in the ninth to win a game, an Oscar winner, or a drop in the stock market.

I also am talking solely from the point of view of a reporter who has spent almost 50 years watching daily coverage of government in Washington become dominated by increasingly sophisticated public relations practitioners, primarily in the White House and other agencies of government, but also in Congress or interest groups and even think tanks on the left, right or in the center. Today there is much too much being offered about government than can be fit into print or broadcast on nightly news shows. The disturbing trend is that more and more of these informational offerings are nothing but PR peddled as "news."

At the beginning of the Reagan administration, Michael Deaver -- one of the great public relations men of our time -- began to use an early morning "tech" session at the White House as something more than notice to television producers as to when and where the President would appear each day. He turned that meeting, which began in prior administrations to help network news television producers plan use of their camera crews each day, into an initial shaping of the news story for that evening. He would roughly say President Reagan will appear in the Rose Garden to talk about his crime prevention program and will discuss it in terms of Chicago and San Francisco. That would allow the networks to shoot B-roll matter in those two cities so there would be pictures other than the President speaking when it went on the evening news.

The President would appear, make his statement, perhaps take a question or two, and vanish. After a while, the network White House correspondents would attend these early morning tech sessions and even later print reporters did. On days when there was nothing prepared and the President went off to Camp David or his California ranch, ABC News White House correspondent Sam Donaldson began his shouted questions -- and those flip answers became the nightly news, and not just on television. The Washington Post, which prior to that time did not have a standing White House story scheduled each day (running one only when the President did something new and thus newsworthy), began to have similar daily coverage.

At the end of Reagan's first year, David Broder, the Post's distinguished political reporter, wrote a column about Reagan being among the least involved Presidents he had covered. The result was he received an onslaught of mail from people who repeatedly said they had seen him every night on TV working different issues. The often told Deaver story is that one night CBS News correspondent Leslie Stahl met him after narrating a particularly critical piece on Reagan, and Deaver told her as long as the President was on camera smiling it didn't matter what she had said about him. When President George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan and occasionally drifted off the appointed subject, criticism began to appear that he "couldn't stay on message." When Bill Clinton arrived and as President did two, three or four things in a day, some critics went after him for "mixing up the daily message."

The truth of the matter is that with help from the news media, being able to "stay on message" is now considered a presidential asset, perhaps even a requirement. Of course, the "message" is the public relations spin that the White House wants to present and not what the President actually did that day or what was really going on inside the White House. This system reached its apex this year when the White House started to give "exclusives" -- stories that found their way to Page One, in which readers learn that during the next week President Bush will do a series of four speeches supporting his Iraq policy because his polls are down. Such stories are often attributed to unnamed "senior administration officials." Lo and behold, the next week those same news outlets, and almost everyone else, carries each of the four speeches in which Bush essentially repeats what he's been saying for two years.

A new element of courage in journalism would be for editors and reporters to decide not to cover the President's statements when he -- or any public figure -- repeats essentially what he or she has said before. The Bush team also has brought forward another totally PR gimmick: The President stands before a background that highlights the key words of his daily message. This tactic serves only to reinforce that what's going on is public relations -- not governing. Journalistic courage should include the refusal to publish in a newspaper or carry on a TV or radio news show any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public.

Walter Pincus reports on national security issues for The Washington Post. E-mail: pincusw@washpost.com

Comments

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Asking serious questions Posted by edrie irvine - 07/14/2006, 04:33 PM If one combined your suggestion (which I wholeheartedly support) with the notion of asking more probing questions and/or following up another reporter's question when the official doesn't answer it, not only would the quality of reporting improve but the American people would be better served and better informed. Currently, the paucity of serious reporting and the parrotting of spin as it is news is both poor journalism and a grave disservice to the readers and viewers.

Posted by robert Bray - 07/14/2006, 05:07 PM I fully support your idea. How can I help facilitate it.

Dear Mr. Pincus Posted by David Chaffee - 07/14/2006, 06:24 PM ...The entire Washington Press Corps could start with a serious investigation of unverifiable, unaditable, and the tabulator jiggling of Black Box voting the past few election cycles. ...Nearly everybody but Rolling Stone magazine has missed the greatest story Never told. ...This entire sorry excuse for an Administration is illegitimate. ...Start with Rep John Conyer's report "What went wrong with Ohio" and just keep digging, it gets way more interesting and Ugly.

Great Idea Posted by Jim Krebs - 07/14/2006, 09:33 PM Good luck. For years I subscribed to 3 daily newspapers . Now I subscribe to none. The quality of what passes for journalism today is disheartening to a citizen's hope for a free nation. I have never been so distrusting of the main stream news media. It seems they are just a machine designed to keep the public ignorant of important facts. I hope The People wake up soon, before it's too late to change the course of Our Nation.

Fighting the PR Presidency Posted by roman eos - 07/14/2006, 10:00 PM Thank you Walter Pincus. My comment is to in turn question whether media structure today enables opportunity for reporters'-driven news, coverage, reportage.? You touched on the instant nature of things which may require more in respect of fast reaction than informed and/or reasoned/seasoned response. For target audiences. Likely anti-experience. Corollary-like, however, is whether more chiefs than indians are running things..Anti-energetic. With regards..

It should not take courage ... Posted by Ken Denney - 07/14/2006, 10:18 PM to report facts as facts and not, in the pursuit of objectivity, assume that reality is a point of view. I am quite tired of watching or reading news accounts in which someone states something as a fact, but, instead of accepting or disproving that assertion, the reporter feels compelled instead to find an expert with a contrasting view. This is lunacy. If I were to quote 20 people as saying the sky is blue, I am not obligated to find the one nutcase in the world who says it is green and report his view to make my report "balanced." Facts are facts. There either are WMDs or they aren't; reporting that some people say they exist and that other people say they don't exist is not reporting. If reporting is to be balanced, it should be balanced on the fulcrum of fact. Not all opinions are of equal weight (see Holocaust deniers).

Three Chears! Posted by Andrew Kolano - Retired 07/15/2006, 01:32 AM It's never too late for taking action that should have been the norm way back when. It has been ovious to me that the same message was being given over and over again, not only by the President but also by many Republicans in their various roles. We have come to the point that we can not accept anything that the President utters as truth. So we no longer listen to his speeches. The other problem I have is that everyone has called this 'invasion' by the USA with the planned phrase 'war on terror' instead of by what it actually was, 'an invasion by one country by another country'. In the World War II the Germans invaded their neighbors, the reasons did not matter, it was an invasion period. It would also be helpful if the official press releases were screened by the news organizations to seperate the reality from the fluff. Keep up the good work. A. Kolano

The Faking of the President, 1,2, 3 Posted by Pamela Ross - 07/15/2006, 05:48 AM Dear Mr. Pincus: Your piece re: the spinning of the president's day-- not what he did but what they want you to think he did or will do-- was brilliant. Thank you for =courage=, Mr. Pincus. Thank you for treating your readers to heavy doses of truth serum in an era of synthetic, template-based, cut and pasting word processors. Thank you for words that make me feel less alone in my anger at what it is clearly the most manipulative Executive Administration in US history.

Public relations as news elsewhere Posted by Mark Raven - Freelance writer 07/15/2006, 09:32 AM Mr. Pincus, My compliments (not sure a man of your stature actually requires them) on your article. I started out in 1987 as a radio reporter, have worked at various newspapers throughout upstate New York, and currently ply my trade for an Internet news organization. Public Relations As News (PRAN, if you will, both for acronym lovers and simply for short) stretches far beyond your arena, Washington, D.C. In upstate New York, George Pataki brought PRAN to Albany when he became governor in 1994. No, this is not the political statement of someone from the mainstream media who dislikes Governor Pataki, Conservatives, or anyone who is not a Democrat. (Funny, isn't it, how journalists almost must offer that qualifier these days?) Pataki, and you can get this from the Conservative's Conservative and the attack dog's attack dog, New York Post reporter Frederic U. Dicker, turned state offices into a veritable fortress. State troopers everywhere. Metal detectors. Worst of all, little access to state officials. For example, if a reporter/writer had a question about a simple road-paving project, said scribe would call the state Department of Transportation's Media/Press Relations Office. Some young political hack, always a nice enough kid, would take down the technical questions about the depth and cost of asphalt on a particular project. The hack would then contact his/her boss for approval of the questions. The hack would then call the state DOT technical expert on road paving and ask only the approved questions. The hack would next take the tech's answers to his/her boss for approval. Finally, the hack would contact the reporter with the approved answers. Of course, the reporter would have two or three follow-up questions, and the whole process would begin anew. And who says government lacks efficiency? (chuckle) These days, I see PRAN in mayor's offices, local school districts, mayor's offices, and village boards. Everyone wants to spin their story. Trouble is, there's little to spin when a school board casts its annual vote for board president or a Planning Board decides whether to approve a three-lot subdivision. It's basic. Sadly, PRAN has become basic. Perhaps we've lost a Harry Trumanesque quality in our leaders, be they national, state, or local. Seems to me, and I could well be wrong, that many want a spot in the kitchen, but very few seem willing to stand the heat that sometimes comes with that location. Thanks for your time.

There also needs to be less opinion and more hard facts Posted by Janet Hessert - 07/15/2006, 10:36 AM Dear Mr. Pincus: Thank you very much for your excellent piece. I would add, however, that another major problem with the media today is that opinion is reported almost exclusively, rather than facts - - especially in polticial reporting. In most current political reporting, the focus is 1.) the perceived personal qualities of a politician rather than their record or 2.) the political points scored by a proposal, rather than how that proposal would play out in the real world or 3.) the latest poll numbers for a politician or proposal, again, judging ideas and people by their popularity rather than merit. All this ties into your premise, since qualities like "charisma" or "likeability" can so easily "created" by a good p.r. team. It's easy for front groups to create an "astroturf" campaign that "proves" a decision was politically successful. And, of course, polls can be manipulated very easily, especially when the questions are vague - - or the public doesn't understand the real world consequences of a proposal because the media has not provided that information. Or even worse - - that the public doesn't know what a politician's actual record or positions are, because the media has simply repeated the politician's spin, rather than providing factual analysis. The American people would be much better served if political reporting was about governing.

Problem With Implementation Posted by Robyn Wyrick - 07/16/2006, 01:40 PM Mr. Pincus' suggestion, by itself, would not have the intended effect. If I have a politician to sell, and half the press abides by Mr. Pincus' proposal - that is half the press only reports on me when there is actual news - but the other half plays my spin, then the spin prevails. Bad reporting has taken up my banner, and good reporting is silent about me. Someone must actively expose the spin. But who can be trusted? Who is not just more spin? This is why we need the Marketplace of Ideas. And here's my difficulty: news reporting in America happens not in a Marketplace of Ideas - but in a marketplace of commerce. The principle behind a Marketplace of Ideas" is that society benefits most from an open competition of different perspectives and points of view. But transparency is needed for open competition. Without transparency competition is corruption; a shell game. The marketplace of commerce is exactly a shell game. You would never imagine that the way to know the truth of a product was to review its marketing. The goal of marketing is to maximize demand for a product. It does not work in a Marketplace of Ideas if we are debating between lies or half truths. So how would the press become a Marketplace of Ideas? To be sure, individual reporters must take a more principled stand. But it's not enough that individual reporters refuse to take bogus spin as real news. Those reporters will be marginalized without other protections. Editors and Publishers need to demand greater accuracy from reporters. But they will also be marginalized without other protections. Your individual virtue is not enough to counter my amalgamated vice. This is why past generations distrusted large corporations. Media conglomerates must be broken up. If only a few companies own most of the media it stifles courageous reporting. The profit motive must be reduced. Protection of profits corrupts the truth. Public education must be increased to the graduate level throughout the country. This might seem unrelated these problems do not occur in a vacuum. Without exposing the public to advanced knowledge and how it is obtained, they have little chance to glean the truth for themselves. But finally, America needs to close the gap between the rich and the poor. This also might seem unrelated, but in the Marketplace of Ideas the poor cannot have one store while the rich have one million. In society the truth is the child of equality.

Great article, but I think we need to shame them when they are obviously lying. Posted by Zen Seeker - http://zenseeker.com 07/16/2006, 10:56 PM Shame on the New York Times and the lack of courage of the MSM by Zenseeker at http://www.zenwire.com/digg.php ... Sat Jul 15, 2006 at 02:44:42 PM PDT I posted this on blogger.com in 12/2005, but this might be relevant with a new war brewing on the horizon. We must hold them accountable. Shame on the NYT for failing to speak the truth at a critical time, especially when it could have made a significant difference and possibly change the course of recent events. All those so called journalist out there continuing to defend this administration should all have their true colors revealed and labeled as cowards and whores. If you really wanted to seek and report the truth, then you should not let anything stop you from doing so. And if you somehow stopped short, or hold out on a story, or delay your reporting, or save your tidbits for a book, then you are in reality a sellout and please don't even bother trying to profess your innocence or fictitious circumstances or motives anymore. True reporting, like in other third world countries and even modern regimes, requires courage. True journalism, the kind that merits admiration, requires a complete disregard to the powers that be and often necessitates the type of actions that are even deemed heroic. A true reporter will not let unjust laws stop them from reporting the truth when those laws are specifically put in place to shut them up. A true journalist, in the name of conscience, will somehow find a way to leak their story out to protect and serve others even if their personal freedoms or material existence is threatened; even in the face of death. This is heroic journalism. Where are our heroes? We don't have heroes anymore. Those days are gone, all we have now are stenographic wimps seeking favors and handouts and loud mouth whores pushing their books and selling their souls. The rest are merely cowards of a shell waiting for a safer, just the right time that will never come as they linger to justify their retirement nest egg geting fatter and fatter. Out of room, more in next post

Continued from last post: Shame on the New York Times and the lack of courage of the MSM Posted by Zen Seeker - http://zenseeker.com 07/16/2006, 10:58 PM Continued from last post: Shame on the New York Times and the lack of courage of the MSM by Zenseeker at http://www.zenwire.com/digg.php ...... Sat Jul 15, 2006 at 02:44:42 PM PDT I posted this on blogger.com in 12/2005, but this might be relevant with a new war brewing on the horizon. We must hold them accountable. Where are our heroes? We don't have heroes anymore. Those days are gone, all we have now are stenographic wimps seeking favors and handouts and loud mouth whores pushing their books and selling their souls. The rest are merely cowards of a shell waiting for a safer, just the right time that will never come as they linger to justify their retirement nest egg geting fatter and fatter. Remember those reporters in the Killing Fields getting their story out? Even in times of war or under repressive regimes true reporting can still happen. Like John Malkovich, the photographer in the movie, under threat of arrest or even death, he still manages to capture pictures to show us the truth. This does not happen anymore. Reporters now ride in tanks and wear bulletproof vests and seldom venture out without a regiment of soldiers in tow that are now their protectors and friends. Their own self interest is now too valuable, more valuable than objectivity and truths, evidently. It's not worth if for them to confront any sort of abuse, corruption, or even outright lies straight to their faces, much less daring to talk to a stranger in Baghdad or just right here at home, on the street corners of New York. I am losing hope, I long for the day when a truly courageous one out there will rise and stand up to lead us out of this muddy mess into clearer grounds. Please, let there be some left, let it be so. Don't shatter what's left of my delicate illusion instilled since preschool. But, until that moment comes, the rest of those pathetic journalists should be called upon and constantly blogged and loudly labeled their true colors for all to plainly see. This is my only hope.

Slap the truth out of Lieberman Flash Game Posted by Zen Seeker - http://zenseeker.com 07/16/2006, 11:09 PM I also made a couple of flash games about Lieberman: Back Stabbing Lieberman at http://zenwire.com/flashmedia-lieberman.php ... and Slap the truth out of Lieberman in Connecticut at http://zenwire.com/flashmedia-slaplieberman.php ... There are also other games there too like Uncle Sam throwing knives at Ann Coulter http://flashmedia-anncoulter.php ...and bushshootout and dancingbush and dancingblair plus many others. When you guys take a break, check it out.

Truth ... what's that? Posted by OC Patriot - 08/13/2006, 11:37 PM Why even bother to speculate about such garbage? Truth is simply NOT important to Bush, Rumsfeld or Cheney. I think Jon Stewart milked this dry by showing what each of these guys said, and then showing what they said beforehand, highlighting how glibly they lied. I distinctly remember "liar, liar, pants on fire" as a tag line on Stewart's show because of an egregious lie told by one of these three. It is best to understand that Tony Snow is a hand puppet, whose script most of the time isn't even written by Bush; Snow's mouth moves and says what he's told to say. They all lie. Of course they lie. Truth isn't important. Only what they think in their head, only what concotions get brewed in their bunker-like mentality, seem to be "real" to them. So why -- why, indeed? -- would anyone expect anything else from them (including Mrs. Bush)? She may believe what she says on a program like Larry King, probably does, may not -- what difference does it make? They all lie. And people like Larry King aren't journalists, they're entertainers; they have no discipline or sensitivity or even any reason to ask hard questions. Why, oh why, do so many people, including Democrats, seem to expect it? By keeping up even the pretense that they don't lie or that they shouldn't lie, you end up playing the victim, and that seems to be the role you've assigned for yourselves. Lamont seems to have broken through, and Murtha, and a couple of others. But, by and large, we're still seeing "poor me" victims. Submit a comment - Jump to top of list