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Why America hates the press

The new PBS documentary doesn't tell us why we do... but exemplifies why we should

 

With such an  unambivalent  title as "Why America Hates the Press," the producers of the new Frontline documentary are claiming to have discovered why that monolithic entity 'the press' is universally hated. 

The statement may be true, but this show doesn’t prove why. 

PBS offers us as protagonist James Fallows, the former political speech writer whose recent tell-all book Breaking the News exposed rampant misconduct, irresponsibility and greed by the Washington press corps. national political reporters. For this, the object of his criticism many national reporters deemed him a heretic. Yet Fallow’s book did not expose widespread press-hating among Americans. 

Notably, Fallows is a print journalist (the editor of U.S. News & World Report) and so are  his numerous supporters, including Christopher Hutchins of Vanity Fair, Jack Germond of the Baltimore Sun; and Geneva Overhauser, Dave Broder,  and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. 

Thus the stage is set for a battle between print , which presumably holds fast to press responsibilities, and broadcast, which is assumed to put entertainment and financial imperatives ahead of the needs of the electorate. 

Many of Fallows’ targets admit that they can’t resist the easy money and downplay their professional compromises. Germond and David Gergen defend their integrity with ambiguous statements such as, “Your boss is your public.” 

Frontline represents itself as a fifth estate, watching the watchdogs, and purports to speak on behalf of average Americans not connected with the glitter and glamor inside the Beltway. 

“We’re out of touch with the people we’re reporting for,” says critic John Katz, noting that journalists once came from the ranks of the working class, cops and plumbers, whereas now they’re more likely to be the children of doctors and lawyers. Adds Mark Hertzgaard, author of On Bended Knee: “Their sympathies are with the people at the top, not those outside the palace.” 

Yet all this criticism comes from inside the walls: the press itself. Missing is that phantom, the public. “Why America Hates the Press” vaguely acknowledges, but doesn’t investigate, public perceptions. 

The questions that provide some hope of determining whether and why America hates the press are ignored: What might we want, if anything, in place of this shimmering elite press? What mightreplace these journalists who serve their own interests by providing a mere modicum of infortainment? 

The problem with Frontline is exactly what its producers accuse the national press of: inexorable links to the sources they seek to expose. Narrator Stephen Talbott calls himself an outsider, but he’s a producer for a well-known program on a national broadcasting network, which probably sounds a lot like “press insider” to cops and plumbers. 

When Bob Woodward says the narcissism of the Washington press corps is almost terminal and Christopher Hutchins derides the self-flattery and adoration with which the press conceives of its role and responsibilities, one wonders whether Talbott et al. recognize their own faces in the mirror. 
 

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