Three journalism stories have landed in the last three days… one from the right, one from the left, and one from the kitchen. But I all see all three as part of an ongoing issue about the future of journalism.
First, there is David Brooks
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
“This guy
I didn’t know this about you, Christian, but you are one of those guys who seems to measure morality aaginst its results rather than against its own standards. If you do that, there is no morality, only results, to measure.
You’re right. There is nothing scary about any one story. Not even the idiot freelancer who brought down a general by quoting bar chatter.
Those would be the trees. I’m looking for the forest.
As I said in the other thread, David, you’re a deontologist in an increasingly consequentialist world.
Also, the now defunct Journolist was made up almost exclusively of left-wing journalists and various sympathizers and hangers on. (Ezra Klein did start it, after all.) That means it was someone on the left who had it in for Weigel, or at least was complicit in helping someone on the right get him.
BC, Ezra Klein says Tucker Carlson recently asked to join Journolist and was turned down. He then spurned Klein’s idea of forming a new one. His site then wrote about Weigel’s private correspondence. Could he have anything to do with this? Or just coincidence?
You really don’t think there was anything wrong with the Fishbowl people choosing to share private correspondence? Were they really just trying to protect Post readers and journalistic integrity?
Stella, no way Journolist is private. Not when it has 400 members. And it’s been compromised before; Mickey Kaus and Michael Calderone both blew its cover last year, Kaus I think being a member. Is it underhanded that someone made hay out of what we might describe as the minutes of a semi-private club? Probably. At least, the notion of privacy was maintained, if not the reality. And anyway, I don’t think it was a firing offense, unless Weigel truly believed he was compromised for that beat, and WaPo was unwilling to use him on a different one.
My point is that since no one on the right belonged to Journolist, it had to be a member who leaked Weigel’s e-mails in the first place. That is, someone on the left (since only such people were members). Some on the right painted a bullseye on Weigel’s back (though plenty have come to his defense, too), but they wouldn’t have known where to aim without someone on the left calling in the coordinates.
While I’m somewhat sympathetic to McChyrstal being a doofus who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, and I understand the general point about elevating gossip over actual news, that doesn’t make the Rolling stone reporter an “idiot freelancer” maliciously quoting “bar chatter”. It’s one thing when studio executives, studio heads, whoever talks shit about someone else in what could be construed as “off the record” type conversations. There is no conceivable public interest at stake and publishing it is pure gossip. But when a commanding general and his staff are openly disrespectful of the president and the chain of command, that is most definitely news and not gossip. And again, I am very sympathetic to saying that the media consumption of these stories is 99% soap opera and 1% real news. But there is no indication that the reporter specifically intended to highlight or shop these quotes, or that he had in mind the media circus that resulted. And I see no evidence that these conversations were a priori off the record.
Daveid, I agree with your overall point. You could map a chart that shows how tabloid/soap opera minutiae has gone from distracting to dominating with the rise of instantaneous communication. The faster the contact, the less we have to discuss. The old cliche of teens on the phone for hours is as archaic as the switchboard because now, the line is never shut off. E-mail begats instant messaging, begats text, begats Myspace, Facebook and now Twitter. When the general population feels the need to inform each other over bits of daily nothing, then societal conversation is going to follow suit because the large communication outlets are beholden to the tech trends. In other words, if a media outlet says nothing for one day, does it exist?
This thread is actually the perfect example. You’re writing about a larger theme and everyone else wants to dive into the incrementals of the stories. Too big, break it down, back into the weeds.
Well it sure was intended to be private BC. And here is more from Klein today:
“Getting a couple of e-mails cherrypicked from missives sent on one e-mail list serve is, at best, a snippet of one type of conversation Weigel has. A different type of reconnaissance would’ve made it look like he’s a conservative extremist who admires Ronald Reagan and voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 primaries. A more accurate and full portrait can be found in Liz Mair’s assessment: Weigel is an idiosyncratic libertarian who likes some politicians and media figures, and not others. And those likes and dislikes do not fall neatly across partisan lines.”
And more from The Atlantic:
“I agree with my Atlantic colleagues Marc Ambinder, Andrew Sullivan, Conor Friedersdorf, and (in guest role for Megan McArdle) Julian Sanchez that the Post was wrong to force its reporter David Weigel out today, after some of his reckless private emails were leaked. This means disagreeing with my Atlantic colleague Jeff Goldberg’s initial condemnation of Weigel, later modified in several posts.
Going through all aspects of the issue would require many thousands of words, on top of the zillions already written. In brief: I agree with Friedersdorf’s explanation of what should and should not count as bias in journalism; Sanchez’s warnings about where the veneration of faux-objectivity would lead (as opposed to fair-mindedness and transparency); and Ambinder’s account of the kind of reporting Weigel actually did. Weigel was foolish to put the things he did into emails, but the posts above do a good job of explaining why that folly shouldn’t disqualify his reporting. One obvious lesson: never say anything negative about a specific person in email or other digital media. Sooner or later, the person will see it. There is no exception to this rule.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/on-weigel-v-wapo-todays-inside-the-beltway-journalism-news/58773/
I kinda wish that it was really consequentialism, Bc. AT least that would qualify the approach people take as a philosophy.
It’s more like Indulgent Consequential Absolute Relativism, in which every judgment is based on:
1. your perception of those being judged in light of your own beliefs
2. the outcome feeling like something of import or not, based on your “gut”
3. an intellectual willingness to pick and choose the facts in a situation based on your priorities, not the full range of facts in a situation
4. a claim to a clear, inflexible moral standard, which is, in reality, wide open to adjustment to fit the previous issues
Ground down, it’s “If I don’t feel bad about it, it must be okay. If I don’t want to think about the details, it is not worth discussing. If you are my enemy, on some level, then the rules are different for you. If the outcome doesn’t raise my blood pressure, not only shouldn’t it raise yours, but you are a fool for giving it another thought. If the outcome does raise my blood pressure, there is no value in discussing other perspectives, as doing so insults me.”
Torpid bunny… I appreciate that you are being measured.
But have you read the piece?
It is clearly intent on being sensational. His opening line is, “How did I get screwed into going to this dinner.” By graph five, McChrystal is giving his chief of staff the finger.
The Joe Biden thing… presented as the staff imagining what the general might say if asked a question about Biden. It’s inflammatory, but not even presented as something said directly, buy it’s offered so inartfully that it has been read worldwide as the general’s staff member calling Biden “bite me.” That and the fact that Rolling Stone pulled the quote out of context completely and highlighted it.
Another indicator that he knew what he was doing is that almost none of the inflammatory quotes are quoted directly. He doesn’t name them. It’s “an aide” or “a top aide,” or “an advisor,” etc. If the quote is so on-the-record, why no name the person who said the words?
And no, in my opinion, people mouthing off is not news. It’s lovely of you to reduce the significance of it in the film business vs the military. Perhaps your standard for importance is the job itself, but there is not an office of size on the planet that doesn’t include this kind of mouthing off. Again, as I quote Brooks, he hears it from Senators. Is it irrelevant then too? Is that news?
What I see is that it becomes NEWS when fairly benign private conversations become public. We’re still hearing about “bitter/gun/god” from the embarrassment that HuPo printed… their Lewinsky dress.
I have been on the bad side of this, as a subject. I have also been a journalist who spends a large percentage of my time off-the-record. I believe that almost every single one of us who toil in this garden knows the difference between something that is meant for the record and something that is not. I believe that when someone starts getting sloppy, we know, and journalists are obliged to remind that these things are going on the record, painful as it is… especially when we have unique access.
This doesn’t mean you have to lay down.
But the difference between News and Gossip, to me, is smart as comments by the men in the field command and those men acting out in some way that contradicts the military hierarchy.
If some operation that was intended to happen didn’t seem to happen with the full enthusiasm of the military command, then hell yes, the attitude stuff is News. But if there is no connection to anything and you’re just using colorful language to hang people out to dry, it’s Gossip… and you, as the author, are an asshole.
I remind, I felt much the same way about Michael Moore using pre and post video from Bush and others in Fahrenheit 9/11 to mock them. He knows better. It was cheap and lazy. On the other hand, while I felt he overdid it, the illustration of Bush sitting in that school on 9/11 had some meat.
And now, we see pictures of Obama teeing off to claim he doesn’t really care about The Gulf… which any reasonable person knows is bullshit. But Michael Moore put that on Obama by abusing Bush the way he did and showing how well it could work, preaching to the base.
And wasn’t Weigel hired to be opinionated? The idea that bashing Limbaugh and Tea Partiers means he couldn’t properly cover the right is ludicrous. I hate to break it to the Nicol D’s of the world but plenty of moderates, independents, libertarians, and other non-liberals believe Limbaugh & his ilk and Tea Partiers are totally bonkers. Even if his comments were ill-advised, I don’t see how that proves he wasn’t up to the task he was hired for. That or the ground rules for Right Now were not properly laid out. Either way the Post is at least as much to blame as Weigel, if not more.
“Either way the Post is at least as much to blame as Weigel, if not more.”
I think that is the key issue. I’m not sure the Post really knew what they were getting in Weigel, or why they were getting him. He was basically hired in a bit of cronyism; Ezra Klein said, hey, you should get this guy, so they did. (Since when does Ezra Klein make the Post’s hiring decisions?) Lots of conservative bloggers have defended Weigel. But I suspect that the Post decided they couldn’t have him apologizing for slagging his beat every six weeks. Probably they expected him to be more of a reporter, less of an opinion writer, i.e., the opposite of Klein, who is a predictable shill, but whose predictability makes him unobjectionable to everyone.
Most conservatives who wrote about his resignation seem not the least surprised Weigel said what he did. But I think from the Post’s perspective that once he gets this reputation for thinking conservatives are stupid, etc., then he’ll start at a disadvantage with readers, who will come to whatever he writes with eyes askance. Weigel was hired to cover the conservative movement. He hardly did that in three months, unless one thinks the tea partiers are the whole of the conservative movement. But now we won’t find out if that would have changed.
Last point. This pretty much guarantees that the Post will hire a conservative blogger or two to join Greg Sargent and Ezra Klein, both of whom came from the left-wing of the blogosphere. In September, just as the election is getting into full gear, seems like the obvious time. Pure speculation on my part, but reasonable speculation, I think.
Also, I think there is some internal WaPo politics at play here. For a long time .com was separate from The Washington Post. They eyed each other warily and there was a lot of latent mutual hostility. Eventually keeping them separate became too much of a headache (not to mention the web side caused a lot of petty grief for the print side) so the web operation was dissolved and merged into the print side. Given this past history, WaPo management’s tolerance for .com’s shenanigans is probably minimal at best.
Keeping the two branches separate (they were in different states, in fact) didn’t work. But bringing them together hasn’t gone smoothly, either. They will figure it out eventually, but in the meantime their growing pains are exposed for all to see. And to make grist for their mills and axes.
Weigel wasn’t an op/ed writer like Klein or a blogger. He was hired as a journo with creds. This stems from Kos running Ben Domenech out in ’06 a week into being hired as a blogger for WaPo on college plagiarism charges, and the push behind Kathleen Parker.
What got Weigel fired was when the first comments appeared, he attributed it to a bad day and apologized. Then, dozens more from weeks and months earlier spilled out. It’s not the crime, it’s the…
No one would have cared if he was op/ed or a blogger, but WaPo decided to make him legit so he could have the press pass. What happened to McChrystal was exactly why Weigel was given reporter status. They thought his quasi-right creds would gain confidants and the press pass could act as his shield. It worked for the Stones writer because McChrystal and his team thought if they confided in him that they were fellow travelers on the social liberal road, he would have their back.
“Weigel wasn’t an op/ed writer like Klein or a blogger. He was hired as a journo with creds.”
Sorry Martin but this simply is not true. As Howard Kurtz recounts in the Post, Weigel was hired as a blogger to cover the conservative movement. He adds, “This new breed is expected to report for their online columns while also offering a point of view, and Weigel’s Right Now blog was meant to be in that mold.” Again, WaPo seems to have erred by not clearly defining his role.
Bullshit, Stella. Did you even read Kurtz’s full article?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/25/AR2010062504413.html
Reached by phone late Thursday and asked about the e-mails, Weigel responded,
Martin was Weigel not hired as a niche blogger with a point of view? If you are meant to have a point of view, doesn’t that entail being openly opinionated? Also sounds like Carlson has a case of sour grapes for being denied by Klein and spurning his offer to start a bipartisan Journolist.
And this:
“The twist was that Mr. Weigel was hired three months ago, in part, to have opinions. As a blogger covering the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, he was given more latitude than traditional newspaper reporters to write with a point of view and reach conclusions.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/business/media/28post.html?src=busln
Sorry but one more because it articulates how I feel about this better than I have been able to:
“Weigel is interested in movement conservatism and well-informed about it, so Reason handed him an oar and got him underway with his career of documenting its weirder fringes. It should not be a fatal problem that he privately loathes movementarian robot Republicans, unless some evidence of persistent inaccuracy can be shown in what the man publishes. And Weigel
Stella – The guy at the center of the shitstorm is saying you’re wrong.
http://bigjournalism.com/dweigel/2010/06/28/hubris-and-humility-david-weigel-comes-clean-on-washington-post-the-d-c-bubble-the-journolist/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigJournalism+%28Big+Journalism%29
Look – you agree with what Weigel said and how he was going about it because it fits your viewpoint. Frum, Brooks, Parker, Weigel…they’re without sway and thought that could come into authority by biting the hand that’s fed them and sucking up to the established left. But it never works and never will because in the end, nobody trusts a turncoat. To the right they’re sellouts, to the left, they’re useful idiots. And the majority of the time it’s someone from the right who turns because the media groupthink is left.
This isn’t about personal conversations costing someone a job. He “resigned” because he was of no more value to WaPo and when Kurtz tossed out a new action line as to what his gig entailed, Weigel saw what was up. In other words, he’s an f’ing reporter and was hired with that understanding.
So now you are telling me how I think? That is presumptuous and arrogant of you Martin. Also, while I am not speaking specifically about any single individual, it says a lot about the right that they label someone a sellout or turncoat for daring to not toe the party line with their thinking and analysis.
And so what if he refers to himself as a reporter and not a blogger? I’m sure that’s an ago thing. I also did not see him refute the contention that he was hired to be opinionated. Did I miss it?
I will wait for you to call bullshit or tell me I’m wrong.
So now you are telling me how I think?
Are you kidding? What did I write?
you agree with what Weigel said and how he was going about it because it fits your viewpoint.
Your words from waayy back in this thread…
I hate to break it to the Nicol D’s of the world but plenty of moderates, independents, libertarians, and other non-liberals believe Limbaugh & his ilk and Tea Partiers are totally bonkers.
And then a little later…
Sorry but one more because it articulates how I feel about this better than I have been able to:
The quote you pulled…
he privately loathes movementarian robot Republicans…a critic/observer of Palin-Beck conservatism who hates much of Palin-Beck conservatism?
As for sellouts and turncoats, Hitchens, Beinart and Friedman were eviscerated throughout the 2k’s by the left for their positions on Iraq and Afghanistan. Like I said, a left/right flip isn’t as common with writers.
I think you’re purposely trying to make this a pissing match because it’s not that complicated. Olby, Markos, etc… can criticize Obama and other progressives, but they’re still going to vote for them because while not perfect, they share the same principles and beliefs. People like David Brooks, Buckley and especially Weigel don’t even do that. To knock the group you claim to share ideological ground with is one thing, to vote for candidates who unequivocally do not share any of the same core beliefs is the living definition of selling out.
This is why it’s always a guarantee to see Frum or Brooks quoted by lefties as voices of conservatism, when they’re not. They are useful idiots terrified of irrelevancy. If Brooks went back to his old Weekly Standard ways, the outcry would eventually cost him his job. And after everything he’s said and done, who’s going to hire him at that payrate? Nobody.
And so what if he refers to himself as a reporter and not a blogger? I’m sure that’s an ago thing.
I’m sorry, are you now telling me how Weigel thinks? He’s making a distinction between the two because guys like Kurtz are trying to obfuscate his job. He doesn’t want to be called a blogger because he isn’t one. That’s what the whole Austin Powers reference in his article was about; he went to school for the fucking credentials and guys like you do not want to give him the credit for it. Did you even read it?
I also did not see him refute the contention that he was hired to be opinionated. Did I miss it?
Yes. You did. You’ve missed a lot. I’m actually surprised because you’re usually a lot quicker on the intake.
David,
I’ve said elsewhere that these comments were way overblown and that there were potentially innocent explanations for the things MacC is himself quoted as saying. In my mind they were trivial. And I think it’s a good thing that the general was willing to give access to a reporter. I’m in favor of more communication between powerful people and the press. That said, I’ve haven’t read the whole article but it’s immaterial to the question of whether or not the reporter had a right and obligation to quote the general. I say he did. That doesn’t mean I think the issue needed to be a media firestorm. But even just to make an interesting and revealing article, as opposed to a carefully managed press release, those things have to go in.
“I believe that when someone starts getting sloppy, we know, and journalists are obliged to remind that these things are going on the record, painful as it is… especially when we have unique access.” We’ll just never see eye to eye on this. I mean, I guess if a reporter wants to operate in that way, fine, but it’s not prima facie the only ethical way of operating. I see no obligation to clean up a subject’s behavior for him.