The Bloomington (Ind.) Herald Times ran a feature over the weekend on a local boy made good, David Shuster, who now reports for NBC and MSNBC. But the important part, as Atrios noted, was Shuster reflecting on his work at another network where he got his start.
The University of Michigan graduate said the gist of his address will focus on how the changing mood of the country has driven news coverage to be more critical of the administration. “I don’t want to say the media always follow the weather vane of public opinion, but in any administration there is an accumulative effect and the particular circumstances of the past five years have driven the media to examine issues more critically than was the case early on,” he said.
When asked whether he would have had that opportunity while working at Fox, Shuster laughed, remained silent for a pregnant pause and said, “No. The answer is no.”
He went on to recount his six-year tenure at Fox. “At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton),” Shuster said. “I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.
“With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing,” he said.
“Editorially, I had issues with story selection,” Shuster went on. “But the bigger issue was that there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look. I had serious issues with that.” (emphasis added)
When Shuster was first hired by NBC, he was immediately given a 50-page manual of standards and practices. One wonders what new Fox News employees are given, other than a copy of the Republican Party platform.