`Radio Times' on WHYY (91 FM Philadelphia, also televised) had a second hour-long program this morning on the DSM. The host, Marty Moss-Coane, invited me into the studio along and Chris Satullo, the editorial page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The wider questions we discussed were how the media covered DSM, why the reporting was so weak, and whether there are systematic problems with the main-stream media. We also talked off an on about blogs, Daily Kos in particular (though the most substantive discussion was off the air during breaks).
The program will be rebroadcast this evening at 11 PM. Also, this Friday evening (at 10 PM) it will be excerpted on WHYY TV (Channel 12) in its weekly best-of-Radio-Times program. You can also download the audio here: http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html
I thought it was an interesting program, and evidently so does WHYY.
My own goal was not so much to present a sweeping condemnation of the MSM, or to rebut the arguments made by Satullo, as to demonstrate that those of us who are talking up DSM are neither naive nor misinformed. I also wanted to mention several under-reported aspects of DSM, especially the "UN route" as deliberate charade. I'd welcome comments from those who listened.
Marty had a DSM program on May 25 (see this diary), so naturally she was looking for another angle. Chris Satullo had written a June 12 column which in several ways is rather maddening. He argues that there is nothing new in DSM that an attentive reader in 2002 would not have known; that those who hype DSM are misreading and overinterpreting it; that we can't admit that the public just does not care what the truth was about Bush's lies. He also reduces the minutes to three sentence fragments that he attributes to "an unnamed British intelligence official" (i.e. Dearlove), and describes Bush's refusal to allow the inspectors to finish the job as a personal "tragedy" for him (he does not understand that the "UN route" was a charade).
On the air, Satullo was especially eager to rebut the idea that there exists anything that may be called "the main-stream media." He said that talking about a MSM is a sign of weak thinking (rather rich, coming from someone who described us as "whiners" for trying to raise the profile of the DSM). From his comments, including off-air discussion, it was clear that Satullo was very prickly about accusations that some of his readers make about his failure to hold Bush accountable. He has an on-line readers' forum, so he is responding fairly regularly to such complaints.
I believe Satullo is just out of his depth with the DSM. For example, he had no apparent knowledge of the other leaked documents. But the man is no fool. One of his more perceptive comments (off-air?) was that leftists had decided, after years of watching right-wingers work the refs, that it was time to start pressuring journalists in the reverse direction. He admitted that this is likely to produce results, as much as he resents the hyperbole and invective against journalists that often accompany such tantrums.
My own tactics were to look for ways to introduce important but overlooked information, or interpretations of the evidence, in making points about more general issues. For example, I waited for Satullo to argue that DSM says nothing that readers of his newspaper wouldn't have known in 2002, and only then introduced the DSM reference to "spikes of activity" in Iraq. I was pleased to be able to shoe-horn in the fact that US forces had made an incursion on Aug. 8 2002 into Iraq to seize airfields in preparation for the big invasion--a fact unreported in the US media. I also managed to get in a reference to the Sproul & Associates scandal, as an example of the failure of media to follow up on big stories.
I've always been highly impressed by Radio Times. After seeing it in action, I'm even more so. Marty Moss-Coane is very sharp and unusually well prepared. I glanced over the extensive dossier of printouts she had, which were heavily annotated and highlighted. With that command of the material she's able to lead a discussion deftly, so that the hour's discussion seemed to go by in a flash. It reminded me of the very best graduate seminars I've attended (where the faculty member is testing the students' ability to react to questions old and new). That may not be the most appropriate comparison, but it is the best one that comes to mind. I'm surprised this show is not in national syndication already on NPR.
One final note: In early May I wrote to my GOP Congressman, Charles Dent, asking him to join Conyers in requesting information from Bush about the DSM. My response was silence, until this morning. Four minutes after I went on the air (and several hours after I was announced as a guest on Radio Times), I received a non-committal email from Dent saying he would keep my views in mind if the matter ever came to legislation in Congress. Even more oddly, he lamented that DSM might be used by some to ruin the `Special Relationship' with Britain. What can one say, except to laugh in his general direction?
