Today's Sunday morning "press" shows are not good journalism.
Since I first discovered David Brinkley’s Sunday morning show I have been addicted. Now with the miracle of a DVR, I don’t even have to stay glued to the TV Sunday mornings. I record three shows: Meet the Press, Sunday Morning with George Stephanopoulos (the old Brinkley show), and Face the Nation. Of late, I’m re-thinking my addiction. These shows have mostly lost their hard edge. Hosts don’t follow-up on guest’s statements, and the round tables have become both predictable and boring. Worse still, is the implication that these shows are journalism. They may be vehicles for advertising. They may be platforms for people in the news to spin their positions. They are not journalism. Let me cite a couple of examples from last Sunday, February 5, 2012…Super Bowl Sunday.
First case in point: Cash Under the Table? Or out of the Job Market?
On Sunday, Newt, I never want to stop talking, Gingrich was a guest on David Gregory’s Meet the Press. Gregory, basically let Newt give an extended version of his stump speech. And even when Gregory tried to ask a question, he never really challenged his guest’s response. So, when Newt countered Gregory’s argument that the latest unemployment figures showed an improving economy, with the scripted line that figure didn’t include those who’ve gotten so discouraged that they’ve stopped looking for work or retired: Gregory made no counter argument. Now in fairness, I know David Gregory can be very intelligent and a tough questioner. Therefore, I was particularly bothered that he didn’t challenge Gingrich. He could, for example have pointed out that no data on those so called drop outs has ever been produced. He could have asked: How are they surviving if they’ve dropped out? Are they back in school? How many are working in the informal economy? You know, the brother-in –law for cash under the table? How many retirees are just as happy to finally take the plunge? He could have pointed out that if people retire, they really can’t be counted as needing jobs. Yet Gregory just sat there and let Gingrich go on and on.
Second case in point: Religious Discrimination?
Let’s consider two examples. First, back to Newt on Meet the Press. He claimed that the Obama administration had declared war on religion. Newt cited several examples one of which I’ll discuss next in a different context. The one I want to talk about here is religious organizations holding services in empty NYC public schools. The practice has evidently been going on for years; and the NYC school authorities decided it was time to end it on the grounds it violated the separation of church and state. A US Court of Appeals supported the schools, and the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Somehow Gingrich spun that into a war on religion by the Obama administration. And again, Gregory let it all slide. I mean, theoretically the majority on the Supreme Court are Newt’s people not the President’s. The larger point is: might not this insistence on the right of organized religions to use public, taxpayer supported, building be construed as those institutions knowingly pushing into an area previously off limits?
David Gregory is not the only one to fail to take issue with obviously biased opinions. George Stephanopoulos is back as host of ABC’s Sunday morning show. During the round table discussion the topic of the Obama Administration’s decision that religious institutions, widely read as Catholic Church sponsored institutions, need to include certain types of contraception as part of the health care package they provide (and pay a portion of) to their employees. The ruling has raised a hue and cry from the Catholic Church that it is being forced to do (or is it pay for?) something against its moral principles. Mathew Dowd, an ABC political analyst was a member of the round table. Prefacing his remarks by saying he is a board member of a Catholic hospital in Austin Texas, Dowd came out strongly against the ruling. Why? Because one in six Americans receives treatment at Catholic hospitals and it is unfair to put those institutions in a situation where they will need to choose between losing some Federal funding and therefore not being able to provide services or their moral principles.
Stephanopoulos let those remarks slide; as he did equally as inflammatory ones by George Will regarding Planned Parenthood and abortions. Granted Arianna Huffington did get to say that we’re talking about a lot of employees who aren’t Catholic. However, I believe that there is a much larger point that a host claiming to be a journalist has an obligation to make. That point is: by taking the position they are taking, all Catholic institutions, including universities, are in fact making acceptance of their moral principles a condition of employment. And if so presented to perspective employees, especially in an economy where good jobs have been hard to find especially for recent grads, wouldn’t that practice immediately be stopped as a violation of any number of laws including the Civil Rights legislation? Why do I argue that? If an employee is sexually active, and if they wish not to become pregnant, and if they find the cost of contraception burdensome, then Catholic practice would call for abstinence. That is, because of the economic hardship of paying for birth control, non-Catholic, or even lapsed Catholic employees are potentially coerced into accepting Catholic religious dictates.
A tyranny by a minority is just as odious as a tyranny of a majority. Just as every individual and group of individuals has the right to their beliefs; so no individual or group has the right to force anyone else to accept their beliefs.
Final Thought
Once upon a time I taught a college class on how to write editorials. I taught that a good editorial will use information without manipulation to convey the writer’s opinion. And that alternatively, if students couldn’t make their points without manipulating information, then perhaps those points reflected prejudice and irrational. Editorials are, I taught, part of journalism, a different part than reporting, but sharing a common requirement that information should not be manipulated. That is, just as good reporting requires multiple sources before information is taken as correct, so editorial writers (and their editors) need to be held to the same standard.
By that standard, it seems to me that these Sunday morning “press” shows are doing a poorer and poorer job maintaining that basic journalistic practice. Interviewing someone on TV is no different than a reported interviewing someone in the field. The host’s job is to gather information. The host, therefore, needs to make clear when a guest is using biased information. They need to ask themselves: would an editor let me put this in print without verification? Round tables are also on the editorial side. Round table participants spin information in a manner to make it work for their opinions. Giving an opinion on accurate information is good journalistic practice. However, if a panel member purposefully ignores relevant information to make their point, then the host must point that out: the host has only one role that of a journalist. Hosts today seem satisfied if another person gives a different view even if that person also manipulated information to their advantage. That practice just confounds the problem. Both David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos had the obligation as journalists to make sure all relevant information was put on the table. In my opinion both Gregory and Stephanopoulos failed in that regard. The press is known as the Fifth Estate, because one of its roles is to hold governments accountable. In that role it is often democracy’s last line of defense. Vital to that role is a dedication to unbiased representations of information by its practitioners.