Maybe it's because my name is TOPDOG08, or maybe they just knew I post regularly here at DailyKos, but the folks at Simon & Schuster sent me two new books to review for free:
Lapdogs
How the Press Rolled Over for Bush
By Eric Boehlert
Watchdogs of Democracy?
The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public
By Helen Thomas
Judging by their titles alone, Thomas asks the question and then Boehlert provides the answer, but the differences go deeper. Keep reading for my reviews, and some excerpts.
Lapdogs by Eric Boehlert of
Salon.com and
Huffingtonpost.com, is the book every Kossack would write if we had the time and the resources. It reads like a 300 page, 11 count indictment of the traditional press for negligence in their duty to provide the American people with the facts. While most of his examples will be familiar to bloggers, the details are new. Mainstream media staples like Ted Koppel, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and even The Note from ABC News always present themselves as fair and objective. After reading
Lapdogs, you'll be "fairly" disgusted with all of them.
From the Swift Boat smear campaign to the Downing Street Memo, time after time Boehlert points out examples of clear conservative bias:
Koppel: If 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton's watch, he would have gone into Iraq.
Brokaw: Yeah. Yeah.
Separately, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer agreed, insisting "there was no other choice for the president to make," but to invade Iraq. No other choice.
Some traditional press reviewers have criticized him for not giving the reporters and broadcasters he discusses a chance to defend themselves. Yet, anyone who actually reads Lapdogs can see why that would be pointless. Of course they have a "reasonable" explanation for their behavior. The reason they are a failing the American public is that they are more concerned with being reasonable, and not rocking the boat, than they are with pressing the issue and getting to the truth on any given controversial issue. No one wants to ask the hard questions and demand answers. Heckled over the years as "liberal media elites", most newsrooms have caved in under pressure and become the "moderate conservative media elites". The only thing that sets them apart from Fox News is that they pretend to be reporting the news objectively.
As Boehlert explains:
Fearful of being tagged with the liberal Scarlet L by an army of conservative press activists who, having codified their institutional rage against the MSM, stood determined to strip the presss of its long-held influence, Beltway journalists throttled way back, and made a mockery out of the right-wing chestnut about the MSM pushing a progressive agenda. And in November 2005, Bob Woodward, the former star sleuth, came to symbolize the press's stunning U-turn from attack dog to lapdog.
While he does not offer many solutions to the problem, at one point Boehlert quotes blogger Peter Daou from his series of essays at Salon.com on the subject:
"It's simple: if your core values and beliefs and posititons, no matter how reasonable, how mainstream, how correct, how ethical, are filtered to the public through the lens of a media that has inoculated the public against your message, and if the media is the publics' primary source of information, then NOTHING you say is going to break through and change that dynamic."
Clearly, Democrats have to change things if we ever want to regain power in Washington. If you are still not convinced, go read Lapdogs, then tell me we don't need to do something, and soon.
Watchdogs of Democracy? by beloved White House reporter Helen Thomas, is a different book entirely. Due for released June 20th, it looks at the lack of backbone in the media from a different direction.
Using the example of the Nixon administration, she compares the outrage at the secrecy Nixon tried to achieve, to the complacency of the White House press corps to the same tactics from Bush today. At the same time, she often tries to defend her collegues by explaining that there really is not much they could have done differently. You can't get blood from a stone:
Fleischer and McClellan obviously did not see themselves as public servants. Nor did they aspire to such a delusion. McClellan was unflappable in defending the indefensible at times. I am, however, critical of the media for taking too long to challenge the administration on the war, to ask the tough questions, to stop accepting at face value the administration's stands on war justification, human rights, and international cooperation, including violations of the Geneva Convention.
With several chapters of anecdotes from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the book expresses a fondness for the good old days, when all you had to do to find the truth was call up a government official and ask for the facts. At one point she even recalls the early days "before television" when the newspapers were relied on as the only alternative to radio for news. In the closing chapter, she lists the journalists who she has admired the most over the years. The book is also full of quotes from other sources that express the points she wants to make. In the epilogue, she explains:
I believe that the media has to do some soul-searching to determine its role in the future after a rocky start in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it is unrealistic, but I would like to see a return to what I consider the ideal values in journalism and less focus on entertainment and financial gain. Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "The press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class, but to bring to fulfilment the public's right to know."
The question of how to get there is where Thomas and Boehlert part ways. While Thomas believes the press could bridge the gap simply by trying harder, Boehlert presents a more accurate view of the systematic problems with the media. She thinks we just need to polish things up a bit, while he thinks we need to burn it down. Unfortunately, I tend to think that Boehlert is right on this one. The key to changing the newsmedia landscape is making our voices heard and waking the MSM up to the fact that bias cuts both ways.
Clearly, blogs will play a central role in the movement for change. While Boehlert does not quote many blogs in his book - other than the Daily Howler - he does mention sites like DowningStreetMemo.com and the role grassroots media has played in forcing the MSM to do its job. Thomas, by contrast, is not a huge fan of the blogosphere:
Opinion it is - unfettered stream of consciousness, a marketplace of rumors, instantaneous feedback and discussion, a bully pulpit for all. Journalism it's not.
The horse is out of the barn. Blogs are the new opinion poll. Blogs, therefore, affect how the news is covered. Blogs and bloggers can lead credentialed journalists to news stories. Bloggers are not journalists and should not undermine the mainstream press. Bloggers are not deserving of reporter's privileges - to think so is ludicrous.
Ludicrous or not, blogs aren't going anywhere. The truth is that if we want to change the mainstream media, as Markos has said, we have to become "mainstream" first, at least in terms of our influence. Books like Lapdogs can help us do it. Helen Thomas is a great reporter, and offers a refreshing view of the White House press corps.
Nonetheless, if you could only buy one, I'd read Lapdogs first.