Comments on: Woodward And Bernstein As O’Keefe And Giles http://thenewnixon.org/2009/09/22/woodward-and-bernstein-as-okeefe-and-giles/ Sat, 19 May 2012 15:00:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: MK http://thenewnixon.org/2009/09/22/woodward-and-bernstein-as-okeefe-and-giles/comment-page-1/#comment-117895 MK Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:56:24 +0000 http://thenewnixon.org/?p=19326#comment-117895 You mention the fractured political landscape. But there's something else at play, as well. I think you overlook a double edged sword here, one which emerged well after Watergate. The tendency in recent years by both the right and the left to identify media outlets as partisan and biased has created an environment where both sides struggle to reach a broad audience. They have only themselves to blame for that. Both the left and the right have focused too much on throwing stones at the other and not enough on establishing a framework where people across the political spectrum will accept their reporting. The time 20 or 25 years ago where CBS's "60 Minutes" could do stories that caught the attention of a large, bipartisan audience are long behind us. We live in a crybaby age now and both sides have to live with their inability to rise above that. The right cries about leftwing bias, the left cries about rightwing bias. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Certainly, in areas with which I'm familiar, I can't give either conservative or liberal outlets high marks for deep seated commitment to objective investigation. Consider the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), whose Office of Presidential Libraries in recent years saw the theft of high level Clinton-era documents by "Sandy" Berger and the mysterious disappearance at its Reagan Presidential Library of a Reagan-era John Roberts affirmative action file which Bush White House lawyers had examined before confirmation hearings. The Washington Post reported both stories but gave more attention to the Berger one than the Roberts one; the Washington Times and Fox only covered the Berger case. (FNC actually produced an interesting and well done special on the one story it covered, "Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper.") Pajamas Media posted the NARA Inspector General report on the Berger incident, only; The Memory Hole posted the IG report about the disappearance of the Robert file, only. Given its nonpartisan mission, NARA would have benefited from a thoughtful and objective examination of both incidents. No media outlet on the right or the left proved equal to the challenge. So you'll have to pardon me when I shrug and say, "meh" when I read about bias and "investigative" reporting by pros and amateurs alike. You mention the fractured political landscape. But there’s something else at play, as well. I think you overlook a double edged sword here, one which emerged well after Watergate. The tendency in recent years by both the right and the left to identify media outlets as partisan and biased has created an environment where both sides struggle to reach a broad audience. They have only themselves to blame for that.

Both the left and the right have focused too much on throwing stones at the other and not enough on establishing a framework where people across the political spectrum will accept their reporting. The time 20 or 25 years ago where CBS’s “60 Minutes” could do stories that caught the attention of a large, bipartisan audience are long behind us. We live in a crybaby age now and both sides have to live with their inability to rise above that. The right cries about leftwing bias, the left cries about rightwing bias. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Certainly, in areas with which I’m familiar, I can’t give either conservative or liberal outlets high marks for deep seated commitment to objective investigation. Consider the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), whose Office of Presidential Libraries in recent years saw the theft of high level Clinton-era documents by “Sandy” Berger and the mysterious disappearance at its Reagan Presidential Library of a Reagan-era John Roberts affirmative action file which Bush White House lawyers had examined before confirmation hearings.

The Washington Post reported both stories but gave more attention to the Berger one than the Roberts one; the Washington Times and Fox only covered the Berger case. (FNC actually produced an interesting and well done special on the one story it covered, “Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper.”) Pajamas Media posted the NARA Inspector General report on the Berger incident, only; The Memory Hole posted the IG report about the disappearance of the Robert file, only. Given its nonpartisan mission, NARA would have benefited from a thoughtful and objective examination of both incidents. No media outlet on the right or the left proved equal to the challenge. So you’ll have to pardon me when I shrug and say, “meh” when I read about bias and “investigative” reporting by pros and amateurs alike.

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