‘That’s not reporting, that’s enabling’

February 9, 2007

Dan Froomkin noted yesterday one of the many interesting revelations from the Scooter Libby trial this week, specifically pointing to part of the problem of the DC political culture. (via Atrios)

If you’re a journalist, and a very senior White House official calls you up on the phone, what do you do? Do you try to get the official to address issues of urgent concern so that you can then relate that information to the public?

Not if you’re NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert.

When then-vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby called Russert on July 10, 2003, to complain that his name was being unfairly bandied about by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Russert apparently asked him nothing.

And get this: According to Russert’s testimony yesterday at Libby’s trial, when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record.

That’s not reporting, that’s enabling. That’s how you treat your friends when you’re having an innocent chat, not the people you’re supposed to be holding accountable.

It helps highlight a problem that often goes largely unmentioned: these guys are friends.

If Russert were just some talk show host having a friendly chat at a party, I could see there being some kind of implicit understanding that the comments are off the record. But Russert is the Washington Bureau Chief for one of the world’s biggest news media outlets — making him one of the nation’s most important broadcast journalists — and he’s made it clear to his sources that they can call his office under the presumption that their conversations are just between them.

As Atrios put it, “Something is broken.”

Obviously, this isn’t just about Russert. About a month ago, Dick Cheney sat down for an interview with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, who asked about the Vice President’s relationship with Scooter Libby, after his former aide was forced to resign. Wallace noted, for example, that Cheney had invited Libby to his annual Christmas party. Wallace knew this, of course, because he, too, had been invited to the same party.

It paints a picture of a certain “chummy” culture in which powerful government officials and the media figures who are supposed to challenge them are on the same team. It’s not about party or ideology; it’s a political-establishment-turned-club in which members know not to push their colleagues too hard.

Of course the media is going to cultivate relationships with sources (and potential sources). For a journalist to have a connection with a government official is key to getting tips and insights later. I’m not suggesting that Russert have a hostile, adversarial relationship with Libby, just to maintain his professional independence and detachment.

But Russert’s testimony points to a broader problem. Top White House aides aren’t supposed to be able to call bureau chiefs’ offices, on substantive news-related issues, “presumptively off the record.” Atrios explained:

Journalism ceases to be about bringing truth to the public and becomes official court stenography. Russert only reports what people agree to let him report.

More than that, even when reality contradicts what they tell him he doesn’t feel that this unburdens him of any confidentiality obligations.

By essentially running administration press releases through a guy like Russert, he launders the information and gives it the stamp of Truth from a news guy that people inexplicably trust.

If nothing else, the Libby trial is offering a peek at how this culture operates. One wants to hope that the revelations will help news outlets reconsider whether the existing system is functional or not.

The news outlets are this way because the people who own them want them to be this way. The fact that Russert is a court stenographer is hardly surprising to the corporate heads of NBC; they pay him to act in that role. There is just about zero chance that any of this bunch will be “shamed” into reforming. At most you might get them to act a bit less overtly as vassals of power, for a short time.

What really needs to be done is the whole ownership structure of US media needs to by dynamited. Force the large media conglomerates to divest, and break up US media into much smaller chunks on an ownership level. Make them compete with each other, such that no one will be able to get away with being pawns to those in power.

  • jimBOB is right. Tim Russert is not a journalist. He is a highly paid lobbyist for the General Electric corporation whose influence rests on fooling regular citizens into believing he’s a legitimate part of a free press.

  • Howard Dean proposed what jimBOB says, and less than a month later the media dynamited him.

    I wonder if pumpkinhead will explain to us this Sunday why he acted like he didn’t know Libby was lying, for all those months.

    Tool.

  • The beltway press and Washington-based leaders have a codependency going on. The press needs the cooperation of the “big fish” so they can get the money quotes and prized appearances that give their “reporting” cache and prestige.

    The White House Gang and Congress need the reporters to spread their message so they can move their political points and games forward.

    The result is an unhealthy symbiosis for the public who’s interests are then served neither by the press nor the games-playing public officials.

    What Russert, and the rest of the media world, should understand is that their credibility is not derived from the folks they get to interview in their stories or on their shows, it’s derived from the public who decides whether the media is their ally looking for the truth or playing the audience for a bunch of chumps. Russert wants us all to be his chumps.

  • ***If Russert were just some talk show host….***

    Actually, he’s more like a rigged game-show host. “He” decides who’s given the correct answer; “he decides who moves on to the next level; “he” decides who’s out, and whether or not they get the home edition of “Doin’ It To America” as a consolation prize….

  • I’m not suggesting that Russert have a hostile, adversarial relationship with Libby, just to maintain his professional independence and detachment

    The hostility may be unwarranted but the adversarial aspect is most definitely warranted.

    Sorry, but our justice system, political party system, and, indeed, the relationship between the press and government absolutely must be based on the adversarial relationship if it is to be as the Founders intended. I would go as far as to say the sycophantic behavior by the Beltway press corp is unconstitutional and should be a matter of review at the highest level of government namely, the Congress.

  • I never understood why journalists allow themselves to be used by their sources.

    Remember just before the Cinton video with Ken Starr was going to be released. Many people in the Clinton White House LIED to the journalists talking about how ANGRY Clinton was during the questioning.

    Well, it turns out Clinton was not angry and he was very calm. So the video didn’t meet the expectations of the people who finally watched it.

    Shouldn’t some of the journalists have gone public and said
    “I was lied to by a number of people in the Clinton White House.”

    I don’t think any of them did.

    I am not picking on the Demcrats or the Republicans.

    I just think that journalists should tell us when they were lied to. they don’t need to reveal who it was who was lying but they should go on the record saying that this source or that source LIED to them

  • That’s what you get with a culture based entirely on corporate TeeVee: Rather than journalists-as-watchdogs we have “journalists”-as-groupies

  • BREAKING: from a leaked NBC press release:

    “Meet the Press” is now officially known as “The McCain, Rice, Lieberman and Hadley musical chair hour”

  • Has anyone ever looked into Tim Russert’s credentials to learn if he even qualifies as a journalist? Has he ever done any reporting? Has he ever written anything besides a memoir about his father? Mainly, he is just Meet the Press’s emcee.

  • Libby objected to Chris Matthews inaccurate reporting concerning matters he was involved in. He called NBC’s News dept manager to correct the mistake and Russert redirected him to the person he should talk to. Here’s the question..do we want TRUTHFUL news from people who have knowledge or SPECULATION from commentators in our news?

  • mrocks

    Libby called Russert to complain about Matthews (rather than calling Matthews himself) because Mary Matalin told him he might get further with Russert due to internal NBC politics. It had nothing to do with concern for the truth.

    However, all this is a sideshow to the more significant aspect of this. Libby used Russert as a fulcrum for his grand jury perjury, believing (correctly) that Russert would cover for him using first amendment concerns as an excuse. Libby miscalculated on Fitzgerald (who plowed through Russert’s BS objections, forcing him to testify and call Libby a liar), not on Russert.

    This could only happen in an environment where the press and the administration are unhealthily close to one another.

  • In the court of king George, the Sunday morning interviewer is the modern day equivalent of the royal portrait painter, our Van Dyke. Russert is the fat kid, utterly lacking in morality, who knows how to paint pretty faces, and how to caricature the opposition. He can’t believe how lucky he is, to be rich, to be someone that people watch by the millions, and someone that gets to be chummy with oh so many famous and powerful people. Russert and Cheney are best buddies. Unless members of the administration are questioned by Russert on camera, of course they’re off the record! Rocking the boat would be bad for GE, nevermind excluding Russert from eating his fill of cake and wine at the daily loyalist parties near and far.

    I don’t have the slightest doubt that Russert and a dozen other sycophants know that Cheney is responsible for the outing of Plame, and for personally standing over the saps at the CIA to falsify the all important NIE shown to Congress before the vote to authorize war. When it came time for Libby to fall on his sword, he pled not guilty. So of course, the loyal servant Russert got up onto the dais to innocently proclaim that Libby was a demon, and Cheney was an agent of god.

    How easy it is to play along with a royal “prosector,” who indicts based on the factor of when, not of who and what and why. A real prosector would have thrown into jail anyone who had outed Plame, or had conspired to write the scam NIE. Novak would have testified from jail, next to hardened criminals. Novak would have implicated his source, and on up the line until it ended at Cheney or Bush. The persons at the CIA who did Cheney’s bidding for week after week to write the false reports sent to Congress would have testified from jail, next to hardened criminals. They would have direct implicated Cheney, who would have been in jail for years by now, next to hardened criminals. This is the way the system works for people who commit treason in any type of country other than a dictatorship.

    So how does the USA act as a dictatorship, where law does not apply to the members of the executive branch? (excepting his manservant Libby) This can only occur with the total cooption of the major media. After all, the major media is obsessed with the slightest scandal of the opposition, and frequently crafts them from whole cloth. What to do.

    War and peas – same thing to Bush

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