Paul Krugman agrees with me on reporters

This is yet another case of great minds sharing the same thought. Paul Krugman's blog in the New York Times for Sept. 19 is incredibly similar to the thoughts expressed in my own blog for that date. Here it is:

What I Hate About Political Coverage
Warning: this is a bit (actually, more than a bit) of a rant.
One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business – namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race. During the 2004 campaign I went through two months’ worth of TV news from the major broadcast and cable networks to see what voters had been told about the Bush and Kerry health care plans; what I found, and wrote about, were several stories on how the plans were playing, but not one story about what was actually in the plans.
There are two big problems with this kind of reporting. The important problem is that it fails to inform the public about what matters. In 2004, very few people had any idea about the very real differences between the candidates on domestic policy. It remains to be seen whether 2008 is any better.
The other problem, which has become very apparent lately, is that this sort of coverage often fails even on its own terms, because the way things look to inside-the-Beltway pundits can be very different from the way they look to real people.
Which brings me to the Petraeus hearing.
To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed. And the judgment you got if you were watching most of the talking heads was that it was a big win for the administration – especially because the famous MoveOn ad was supposed to have created a scandal, and a problem for the Democrats.
Even if all this had been true, it wouldn’t have mattered much: if the truth is that Iraq is a mess, the public would find out soon enough, and the backlash would be all the greater because of the sense that we had been deceived yet again.
But here’s the thing: new polls by CBS and Gallup show that the Petraeus testimony had basically no effect on public opinion: Americans continue to hate the war, and want out. The whole story about how the hearing had changed everything was a pure figment of the inside-the-Beltway imagination.
What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public – it was, more or less, “Oh, people just can’t resist a man in uniform.” But it turns out that they can; it’s the punditocracy that can’t.

the decline of newspapers and Iraq "assessments"

The Decline of Newspapers and Iraq “assessments”

An old friend tells me these are hard times in the newspaper business. Advertising at the News & Observer and the Durham Herald-Sun has dropped to such low levels the two papers have had to drastically cut back their staffs. The N&O’s Chapel Hill News staff has been cut from 10 to 5; the Herald-Sun’s Chapel Hill Herald has been cut from 6 to 3.

This past week was a rather extraordinary one in the history of news out of Washington and Iraq. And, frankly, I think it might offer an object lesson as to why so many people have turned away from newspapers as a source not only for real news, but for serious criticism and commentary on what’s happening in the news. General David Petraeus went before Congress and put an embarrassing political spin on the situation where more thousands of lives are being lost, more billions are being spent every week. There was only one clear moment of honesty and that was when he answered Sen. Chuck Hagel’s question as to whether any of this sacrifice in lives and “treasure” was making America safer. “I don’t know,” answered the general.

Much as we might feel for anybody in Petraeus’ predicament, we must also be aware of the generals who went before him and were fired because they dared to question the President’s war strategy. Petraeus is still in command because he does not do that.

The only people brave enough to point out the contradictions in the General’s White House spin on the situation in Iraq has been MoveOn.Org. I salute that group for calling his report what it was, a “betrayal.” In fact, when you consider the thousands of lives lost, the billions of dollars wasted, “betrayal” is much too mild a word for anybody who would deliberately misrepresent the situation in Iraq. In a full page ad in the New York Times and on its website, www.moveon.org MoveOn clearly documented these lies [let’s call them what they are] to help prop up Bush’s war. They provided links to three specific reports, the GAO, the NIE and Gen. Jones’ independent report. The report by Petraeus flies in the face of every day’s news accounts in Iraq. The situation is not getting better, it’s getting worse.

When the President himself went on national television to deliver his own “assessment” of the situation, he spun a web of lies that went way beyond misrepresenting facts. The most egregious of these was his reference to the “36 Allied Nations fighting on the ground with us in Iraq.” Most of these countries have only one or two token representatives in Iraq and none of them are “fighting on the ground” with us.

Now, in the old days of the partisan press in America, the opposition papers would have seized on the President’s speech and run with the outright lies and misrepresentation in it. However, because of the trend toward phony “objectivity” in recent years, most papers just pick up the lies and run with them….much as we did at the daily briefing in Saigon in the 1960s. That briefing came to be called the “Five O’Clock Follies” for good reason. None of the reportage in the News & Observer or any other newspaper pointed out the follies in General Petraeus’ assessment. None of the newspapers reported the flagrant lies in President Bush’s televised report to the nation. The only reporter to do so was MSNBC’s David Shuster.

Does this help explain why so many are turning away from newspapers? I think it might. In a time that desperately cries out for honest criticism and commentary, the newspapers are simply reporting what the government spokesmen tell them. We all suffer for this in the end.

-o-

On September 12, 2007, the N&O published an outrageous letter by a Duke political science professor named Peter D. Feaver attacking the MoveOn ad criticizing Gen. Petraeus’ report. In melodramatic prose, Feaver [who worked as a security adviser to both Presidents Clinton and Bush] said this ad was comparable to the tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. And in breathless sentences, he recounted the moment when Joseph Welch turned on McCarthy and asked if he finally had no sense of decency. Luckily, a number of people agreed with me that the comparison was preposterous and the N&O published our letters of protest. Here is my letter:



Peter D. Feaver’s article, “MoveOn’s McCarthy maneuver,” was itself the very kind of “McCarthyism” the author attributes to MoveOn.

Feaver denounces MoveOn’s newspaper ad against Gen. David Petraeus’ report by saying: “the advertisement alleges, without any concrete evidence, that Petraeus would not give his honest, professional assessment of the situation in Iraq….”

Anyone who takes the time to go to www.moveon.org and read the ad, will find that Feaver’s statement is a bald faced misrepresentation of the facts. The ad clearly states “Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence… there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there.” To back up these assertions, MoveOn provides links to the full reports of the GAO, the NIE, and the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq.

It is utterly preposterous for Feaver to suggest that this ad represents the kind of baseless witch hunts conducted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Rather, Joseph Welch’s famous words to the senator might well be directed at Peter D. Feaver and other political and military leaders in Washington who got us into this bloody quagmire in Iraq: “Have you no sense of decency , Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
-o-
Here is the responsse I got from a UNC professor.
From: "Elliot M. Cramer" <Cramer@email.unc.edu>To: <pyoung3@bellsouth.net>Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:47 AMSubject: your letter>I was glad to see your reference to the move on ad. Although I am >certainly no fan of the administration and do not agree with General >Petraeus's assessment, the headline speaks for itself; the ad is >indefensible. It certainly is a smear and is as reprehensible as >MrCarthy's claim.> -- > Elliot M. Cramer> PO 428d> Chapel Hill, NC 27514>> 919-942-2503>> Cramer@unc.edu>> Websites> www.unc.edu/~cramer> www.friendsofocas.org

And here is my response to Elliot M. Cramer’s response:


In fact, the MoveOn ad did not go far enough. To misrepresent the situation where thousands are being killed and even more thousands maimed for life goes way beyond mere "betrayal." Read Gen. Petraeus' "assessment," then read the three other reports referred to in the MoveOn advertisement. His political spin was an embarrassment for a serious military man, relieved only by his "I don't know," when asked if any of it was making our country safer.In his own "assessment," the President made no less than a dozen bald-faced lies about the situation in Iraq--the most notable referring to "the 36 Allied nations supporting us on the ground." The only reporter to point these out was David Shuster [formerly New York Times] of MSNBC.These are absurd times in our nation's history. I was at the heart of a previous similar situation, arriving in Saigon the night the Tet Offensive began in 1968. The quagmire in Iraq is even worse. Far from being McCarthyism, what the brave people at MoveOn are doing is the very noblest form of patriotism; the highest expression of honest democracy in the face of political spin.Yours, Perry Deane Young.
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