Arms and influence

The "nice guy" defense

I've been waiting to see what The Daily Howler would say about Tim Russert's death. As usual, Bob Somerby's media critique hit home:

Based on what we saw first-hand, we would guess that Brother Russert really was the nicest guy in the world.

Sometimes, though, “nicest guys in the world” are the last to challenge conventional wisdom—even when it desperately needs to be challenged, examined, hollered about. In Tim’s case, we think he showed poor judgment in various instances over the years, as we’re all inclined to do. Chris Matthews touched on one possible error in judgment in his comments from Paris on Friday’s Countdown (text below). For once, we think Chris’ lack of impulse control served the public understanding—although he’s getting beaten up for his comment at various spots on the web.

Over the weekend, other members of the mainstream press corps did the thing that comes natural inside their group; they went on the air and told Group Tales, tales which reflected quite wondrously on Tim’s journalistic work—and, of course, by extension, most importantly, on them. Telling the truth is pretty much the last thing that enters these people’s heads. And so, they handed out novelized tales about Tim’s always brilliant work—failing to make the slightest attempt to be balanced, objective or truthful.

Highly-paid TV and print journalists like Russert had a job to do, since the 9/11 attacks: Don't let your emotions, or the raw emotions of the American public, cloud your judgment. Report on what is happening, not on what you wish is happening. Stay independent.

These journalists failed. Russert's heart attack does not change that fact. If Brit Hume were hit by a truck, or a 16-ton weight fell on Judith Miller, nothing would change about the history of the last several years, marked by the failure of the American press to do its job.

You can call me Al

After writing that last post, I realized that, if the press is having trouble keeping Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in Iraq straight, they might be having other problems distinguishing between things that have similar names. Perhaps we can help.

Question #1
Shown here are (1) an actual bear, and (2) the Chicago Bears. Show these pictures to a journalist--maybe someone you know, perhaps a member of your own family--to see if that member of the Fourth Estate can tell the difference.

Question #2
If they experience trouble, immediate attention may be required. Take the test to stage two, in which the journalist must tell the difference between (1) Prince Charles, monarch-in-waiting of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and (2) the cast of the sitcom Charles in Charge.

Question #3
Perhaps these examples don't hit close enough to home. Therefore, the acid test asks the journalist to distinguish among (1) a wolf, (2) the German blitzkrieg in World War II, and (3) Wolf Blitzer. This challenge is especially tricky, since it presents 50% more choices than the previous tests.

The painful truth
If the journalist fails any of these tests, you know for sure that he or she will have no chance whatsoever of telling the difference between (1) Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and (2) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, former leader of Ansar al-Islam and founder of Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, a.k.a. "Al Qaeda in Iraq."

The journalists with this problem are suffering from a substantial handicap. After years of trying and failing, it's clear that they are being asked to do a job for which they are functionally crippled.

These journalists deserve our pity--and our help. "Lazy Reporter's Brain" is, like Turrett's Syndrome or chronic flatulence, no laughing matter.

We can only hope that, soon, we will find a cure. Until that happy day arrives, just be careful when the journalist you know says, "I hear Wolf is going to be at that dinner party--I can't wait to go!"

The fall of The New Republic

What the hell happened to The New Republic? Twenty years ago, it was a magazine full of clever, iconoclastic, and readable analysis. Today...Well, just listen to TNR editor-at-large Peter Beinart, interviewed by Bill Moyers in "Buying the War."

I had thought about writing a longer critique of TNR, whose political analysis has descended into profane silliness. However, you might hear all you need to hear straight from Beinart's lips. You'll see why a once-respectable journal of critical opinion has devolved so far, so fast. Beinart remains unapologetic that, because his lack of Middle East expertise, he credulously repeated the Administration's claims about Iraq.

Rule #8 of a sane world: People who don't know what they're talking about should be clearly identified as such.

During Operation DESERT STORM, I was a talking head. When Iraqi SCUDs were falling on Tel Aviv, I appeared on CNN. The anchorperson asked me, "Why aren't the Israelis using the PATRIOT missile batteries to shoot down the SCUDs?"

I paused before answering. I knew that the readiness of the PATRIOT crews was in question, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the exact details. Rather than blurt out something that would later prove to be wrong, I said (to paraphrase myself, since I don't have a transcript), "I'm not sure. I just know that they're not ready yet."

By today's standards, I was a bad pundit. If I had blustered my way through that interview, nothing bad would have happened to me. For my career as a talking head, bravado was more important than accuracy. Uncertainty makes bad television, in today's degenerate form of broadcast journalism. Pundits are wrong all the time, but they keep getting invited back to speak to the electronic agora.

Perhaps the biggest story about the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the calamitous, borderline criminal failure of the American press.

Civil war mad-libs

Yesterday, I grumbled that American newspapers like the Washington Post cover the Iraq war from a purely American perspective. In other words, the subjects of these articles are American soldiers, American politicians and political appointees, or American problems. Unfortunately, winning any counterinsurgency war requires a deep understanding of the country where the civil war is taking place.

After I wrote that post, I realized that I left out an important qualification. American journalists often do write about the citizens of countries wracked by internal war. The content of these articles, while sympathetic to the subject, are largely useless.

It’s hard to speak of these articles in the plural, since they amount to re-wordings of the same story. Here is that Ur-article, presented in the “fill-in-the-blank” format that I can neither confirm nor deny reporters actually use:

___________ has lived in the village of ___________ for all [his/her] life. That was, until war came to the village. Today, ___________ lives in [a refugee camp/fear].

“I don’t know where I’ll go, or what I’ll do,” ______________ said, clutching his ___________, a treasured keepsake. “Nowhere is safe.”

___________ story is all too familiar, in this war that has claimed over ___________ lives. With the failure of negotiations between ___________ and ___________, there is no end to the violence in sight.

Still, ___________ clings to hope. “Every day I pray for peace,” [he/she] said. "It’s all I can do."

What’s wrong with that? At the very least, this kind of reporting draws attention to the conflicts themselves. Unfortunately, that’s usually where the information stops.

After arousing sympathy and horror, the next step should be a description of how these tragic circumstances came to be. Who’s fighting, and why? What is the current state of the war? How is the conflict likely to unfold? Is there anything the reader, or the reader’s elected officials, can do to nudge these events towards an end to the suffering of people like [fill in the blank]?

That’s why I spoke highly of Digital Diplomat’s post about the rivalry among Shi’ite factions in

Iraq, including SCIRI, the Army of the Mahdi, and the Shi’ite dominated government. It’s also why many foreign news sources do a better job of covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the mainstream American news outlets. It’s also why it’s worth reading blogs by the citizens of these countries (here's a sample list from Iraq), soldiers deployed to these war zones, or even the occasional Middle East specialist, such as the widely-cited Juan Cole.

No one deserves a Pulitzer for going to Iraq and pointing a camera at the victims of a car bomb attack. Real reporting means talking to the Iraqis, understanding the political forces propelling the war, and writing clear, accurate, and useful stories. Otherwise, journalists are behaving like besotted doctors who think their job is to describe the symptoms their patients are suffering, without explaining the possible sources of their ailments. (“Wow! Look at the lesions on that guy!”)