Winding Down

Well, the semester is very definitely in the home stretch -- only two more weeks before the alleged winter break. Between now and then, I have to finish my final RWI story (more on that later), meet one more deadline for my master's project, and take the final exam in my Law class. It's a lot to do, but it's good to have the end in sight.

The master's project is still giving me fits -- I'm taking on a huge subject, and whenever I step back to see the forest, I wonder if I'll be able to make sense of it all. I had a hard time pulling together the outline that was due yesterday -- I honestly think it's too early in the reporting process to know what the final piece is going to look like, but perhaps I'm just off track and don't know it. I'm going to meet with my master's advisor next Friday to try to figure it out. Meanwhile, I've got plenty to keep me busy.

Yesterday was also the deadline for my second Critical Issues paper. This is how the professor framed the assignment: "Tell me, in roughly 1,200 words what you see around you, in any medium, that reflects what we have been talking about in class." Here's what I wrote:

Off With Their Talking Heads

In our last class, Professor Wald asked us what Bob Woodward did wrong with respect to the Valerie Wilson leak investigation. One of my colleagues, along with many commentators, suggested that at least one of Woodward’s mistakes was that he went on television and commented on the leak investigation while giving the public the impression that he was a disinterested party. In point of fact, we later discovered, he was very much an interested party, having learned about Ms. Wilson from a government source at least a week before Lewis Libby first spilled the beans about her to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. I agree that Woodward should not have misled the public in this way, but I think the criticism misses the larger point: even if Woodward had had nothing to do with the Wilson affair, he should not have gone on television to comment on it.

I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t a place for commentary in journalism. There certainly is: in newspaper editorials, op-ed pieces, and columns, and in their counterparts in other media. News and opinion journalism are separate entities for a reason—to ensure that readers (and viewers) know which they’re getting and can judge the content accordingly.

We live in a world where the lines between truth and fiction are blurred every day. To some people, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a comedy show. To many others, it’s a news program—perhaps the only one worth watching. Jeff Gannon was a fake journalist with a real White House press pass. Armstrong Williams was a columnist who just happened to peddle propaganda. And now it appears that the Pentagon has hired a Washington-based public-relations firm to plant favorable articles in Iraqi newspapers. These days, how do we know whom or what to trust?

When a reporter—any reporter—goes on a national television program and proffers opinions about the news, he or she has shape-shifted before our very eyes: one minute a reporter, the next a source. Gone is the dispassionate teller of truth. Instead we have what we couldn’t possibly need less: yet another pundit, pontificating.

In doing this, Woodward is far from alone. Turn on the Sunday-morning talk shows, and you’ll see a parade of journalists, touted as experts, spouting opinions seriatim. Usually they come in panels of three. It’s reminiscent of the old game show The Dating Game. “Bachelor—I mean Journalist—Number One, what do you think about such and such?” Then it’s a quick cut to the host before another version of the same question is pitched to the next contestant. And on it goes.

This blurring of the lines is so common, in fact, that we don’t even notice it anymore. Recently, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz interviewed his boss, Len Downie, about Kurtz’s colleague, Woodward. Was anyone really expecting hard-hitting questions and illuminating answers? Never mind that the entire exchange took place on CNN, where, when he’s not writing media criticism for the Post, Kurtz moonlights as host of the Sunday-morning (when else?) program Reliable Sources. Isn’t it dangerous that one of the nation’s chief media critics is perpetuating the practice of blurring journalistic lines?

Woodward, of course, does plenty of his own line-blurring. He’s Assistant Managing Editor of the Post, an investigative reporter for the paper, and author of several books, all at the same time. Unlike other journalists, he remains on staff at the Post instead of taking leaves of absence while working on his books. This, of course, means that it’s never entirely clear for whom he is reporting—for readers of his next book or readers of tomorrow’s Post? That’s all the more reason, I think, that he shouldn’t be peddling his views on Larry King or any other program.

At least with regard to its Reliable Sources program, CNN trumpets this blurring of the lines. On its website, the first sentence of the network’s description of the show reads: “Now more than ever, the press is a part of every story it covers.” Why should this be so? And why do we accept it so readily? That such a statement is made unapologetically is a sure sign that American journalism has reached a point of no return.

CNN’s program description goes on to say that Reliable Sources is “one of television's only regular programs to examine how journalists do their jobs and how the media affect the stories they cover.” But isn’t the whole point that journalists are not supposed to affect the stories they cover?


When Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. appeared before the Senate for his confirmation hearings in September, he gave an opening statement in which he likened the role of a judge to that of an umpire in baseball. “The role of an umpire and a judge is critical,” he said. “They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.” Journalists play an equally critical and equally limited role—to seek and publish the truth while staying very much on the sidelines. As Chief Justice Roberts said, “[I]t’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

Roberts was speaking figuratively, of course, but recently a sports journalist seemed to take the idea of umpiring much more literally, crossing another line in the process. In October, Sports Illustrated reporter Michael Bamberger made headlines when he reported golfer Michelle Wie to tournament officials after she took what turned out to be an impermissibly favorable penalty drop during the third round of play in the Samsung World Championship. According to the rules, the error—if detected—would have cost her a two-stroke penalty. By the time Bamberger contacted officials the following day, however, Wie had already signed her incorrect scorecard and on that basis was disqualified from the first tournament in which she had played as a professional. She forfeited more than $50,000 in prize money. Washington Post sports columnist Leonard Shapiro took Bamberger to task for inserting himself into the action and altering the outcome of the event. “You want to be a journalist, go get 'em tiger,” he said. “You want to be a referee, quit the profession, go get a striped shirt and buy a whistle.”


Last week, Ted Koppel made his final appearance as anchor of ABC’s Nightline after 25 years at the helm of the show. His farewell would have made headlines no matter the circumstances, but the stories that ran generally focused on his decision to end his tenure without the self-congratulatory kind of hagiography we’ve come to expect. In the media echo chamber we live in these days, it’s remarkable that Koppel remained almost entirely on the sideline of a news story in which he was the central character. The fact that he tried not to make himself the news was in itself news.

In this very mixed-up world, Koppel played it straight. Let his example be a lesson to Woodward and all the rest of the journalists-turned-talking-heads out there.