MEDIA MATTERS
Watching them closely
SEVANTI NINAN
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The media in the U.S. is constantly looking critically at itself and those who critique it.
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SHORTLY after President Bush announced troop escalation in Iraq and unleashed a frenzy of media debate, the Baltimore Sun carried an editorial titled "Echoes". Newspaper editorials are not usually footnoted, but this one had 17 endnotes. Except for a brief last para, it was made up entirely of quotes dating from 1964 to 1971. Statements made by presidents, vice presidents, senators, defence secretaries and generals. All alluding to the American engagement in Vietnam, and all uncannily echoing, you've guessed it, the debates over the last three years over the current conflict in Iraq.
Detailed reporting
While this paper made its point without comment, many others have had a lot to say and the TV debates have been endless, senators and representatives lined up on either side of the argument. On local stations, anchors were content to just interview each other on facts revealed by newspaper reporting. For new information on the details of the planned escalation, you had to turn to the usual lengthy, detailed reporting of the New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad, John F. Burns. As is his wont, Burns dips into notes from interviews with Americans on the ground in Iraq to describe the facts and implications of the escalation and echoes the concerns voiced by U.S. commanders. He offers the cautious opinion that, in the short-term, some elements of the new plan may yield immediate results but suggests that overall, based on the assessment of the American commanders, the Iraqi prime minister and his aides are unlikely to target both Shiite and Sunni extremists as required.
In its latest issue, an analyst in the Columbia Journalism Review suggests that Burns' caution reflects a tendency in mainstream American journalism to not venture beyond the facts. He cites an example of the NYT columnist David Brooks quoting some wisdom on Iraq from Burns but both quotes are not from his reporting for the paper. They are from Burns' appearance on a TV programme where he was discernibly less reluctant to offer analysis and comment. But Burns apparently denies that his newspaper is cramping his style.
In the same issue the Review blasts the owner of the Baltimore Sun and the LA Times for indulging in cost cutting, which is ruining its media properties — eleven dailies and 24 TV stations. Calling it "Time to Go" it suggests that the Tribune Company is like Rumsfeld because its strategy has been a demonstrable loser, and it would be well advised to quit the newspaper business and sell its properties to those lining up to buy them.
Policing the media
The media in the U.S. (much more consistently than us) is constantly engaged in looking critically at itself. And at those who critique it! The CJR carries letters, which both praise and damn its efforts to hold a mirror to media practice. And last Sunday, the Ideas section of the Baltimore Sun profiled the state of media policing and the varied lot who do it. It listed 17 media criticism sites on the Internet, where self-appointed critics watch the media. A 48-year-old sax and flute player runs the Crooks and Liars site, which professes to expose "mendacity in media and government". A piano teacher in California is one of nine volunteers who run a site monitoring Fox News alone. It is called News Hounds, and declares "We watch Fox so you don't have to." Similarly a blog called Russert Watch confines itself to watching the host of NBC's "Meet the Press" show. Narrow focus media watch is not a bad idea. Think of the gems a close monitoring of some of our news channels would turn up.
The more staid approach is for newspapers to have their own public editors. The Sun, which has one, suggests that the economic down turn in the media business and the retrenching and cost cutting in evidence everywhere in the U.S. is affecting the practice of hiring public editors or readers' editors. An ironical observation, given what CJR says about the Sun's owners.
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