An open letter to Sarah Palin

Dear ex-Gov. Palin:

I see that you have taken a position on The Associated Press's decision to publish a photo of a dying U.S. Marine in Afghanistan, and that, as is your special skill, you're getting a lot of attention for it.

Your courageous stand is that it was wrong for AP to have published the photo of Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard. Here's what you apparently posted on your facebook page:

Shame on the AP for purposely adding to the grieving family’s pain. Ignoring the family’s wishes by publishing a sacred image of their loved one proved a despicable and heartless act by the AP. The family said they didn’t want the photo published. AP, you did it anyway, and you know it was an evil thing to do

While I appreciate your sympathy for the family, I'm troubled by your apparent conviction that no one should see images of soldiers who are wounded or dying in our wars. I'm reminded of your courageous quitting speech a few weeks ago, during which you goaded the news media: "So, how about, in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin’ things up."

Well, one of the great fictions perpetrated on the American people by the government and news media over the past eight years is that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are painless. We've been encouraged or bullied to "support the troops" with trite bromides and yellow ribbon car magnets, but that's the limit of civilian involvement in these fights. No need to pay more taxes or alter our lifestyles to provide for body armor or reduce our demand for the resources that make this region such a powder keg. And for heaven's sake, no physical evidence that when soldiers are sent off to wars, some of them come home in pieces, and some come home in boxes.

Only recently has the Pentagon lifted its longstanding ban on photographing flag-draped coffins when they return from overseas. And even now, the very idea that everyday Americans should witness a fraction of the violence that our soldiers and Marines are thrust into for months on end is considered one of the great moral transgressions of our time.

The truth, ex-Gov. Palin, is that thousands of American soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands have been physically wounded. Countless others have been emotionally scarred for life, and have brought those scars home to their families and communities. It should not be too much to ask that the rest of us develop the stomach to witness that sacrifice, rather than turning away from it, rather than pretending our willful ignorance is the moral high ground.


The photo in question, which appears here (at the risk of facing AP's copyright wrath), was taken by an Associated Press photographer who was feet away from where this Marine was wounded, which means she could easily have been wounded, too. The image is difficult to read, and the soldier's face is all but unidentifiable, but the mortality of the situation is plain. The photographer, Julie Jacobson, witnessed this event, because she had the courage and selflessness to risk her life to tell the truth about the war and its violence. The other troops on the scene witnessed this event, because we sent them there to risk their lives to further American interests. The implication that asking the rest of us to witness this event, to contemplate its meaning, to consider that the war is real and physical and kills actual people -- the implication that this is "despicable and heartless" is wide of the moral mark. To suggest that such reporting is "evil" -- well, that's the hallmark of self-serving hyperbole. I'm not sure what makes you such a moral authority, ex-Gov. Palin, but there are many greater evils in the world than telling the truth.

Publishing graphic images is always an ethical challenge for journalists, and the grieving family's desire that the photo not be published heightens the dilemma. Reasonable and well-meaning people can disagree about whether making this image public was the right thing to do. But Joshua Bernard did not just die for his family; he died for his country and his fellow citizens. We owe him the dignity of confronting and acknowledging his sacrifice.

Ex-Gov. Palin, your facebook post includes this promise:

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Bernard family. Words can not adequately express our sorrow and appreciation for your sacrifice. We will never forget your Marine or his fallen comrades

Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe you. I'd be surprised if you can recall this Marine's name a week from now. More to the point, I'd like you to tell us something about the last U.S. soldier who died before Bernard, or the next one who died after. You know, share your heartfelt memories of the troops whose pictures you didn't see.

The pitfalls of short-term thinking

Knowing what audiences say they want and what they are chasing is a useful tool for news judgment, but it should not be the sole driver of content. As Tom Rosenstiel mentions in my book, news is what hasn't happened yet, and there's no backward-looking research that can tell you what content will be useful or desired going forward. More to the point, audiences/readers/citizens can't ask for something they don't know is there.

That's why this column on Web hits at the Project for Excellence in Journalism site is so important.

To quote Jim Brady:

I was pretty confident that a story about the celebrity meltdown du jour would get more traffic than our story on President Obama’s current thinking on the Department of Agriculture. But The Washington Post’s bread and butter is coverage of the federal government, politics, diplomacy, national security, local news and local sports, not national entertainment news. To put it another way: If The Washington Post decided to promote stories on its home page based purely on traffic potential, what makes it unique would quickly evaporate.

And, his example originally quoted by Romenesko:

There was nothing in our traffic history to suggest that stories about military veterans were of particular interest to our readers. But when Dana Priest and Anne Hull uncovered the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital, the story went global in hours. That kind of journalism will be increasingly at risk if we get too caught up in the race for page views.

The search for the silver bullet is one of the reasons, to mix a metaphor, that journalists have been chasing their tails for the last several years. The most successful content isn't the kind that follows an audience; it's the kind that creates an audience.

No more national consciousness

OK, I realize that going seven months without posting eliminates me from consideration for the blogger of the year award.

Politico has an interesting story today asserting that Barack Obama is getting away with many affronts to human decency (reducing travel restrictions to Cuba, hosting the Grateful Dead in the White House, going on the Jay Leno show, etc.) that are infuriating conservatives but hardly blemishing his overall popularity. The story quotes pundit Mark Halperin saying that President Clinton, by contrast, "would have gotten hammered" for such pokes in the eye of tradition and dignity.

It may be true that Obama is getting away, relatively speaking, with activities that would have been much more damaging to Clinton in the 1990s. But these examples of an official escaping mass outrage, it seems to me, miss the forest for the trees. Instead of, say, reducing prosecutions of users of medical marijuana, as Obama has done, imagine if Clinton had clandestinely approved the torture of U.S.-held prisoners in a bid to elicit false confessions that would provide evidence to start a war resulting in more than 4,000 American deaths. Such a revelation, a decade ago, likely would have led to bipartisan impeachment charges that would have stuck.

Of course, these are the kinds of details emerging about the Bush administration's treatment of terror detainees (for the best aggregating on this topic over many years, see Dan Froomkin's reporting and editing at washingtonpost.com). But, just like the video of Obama bowing respectfully to the Saudi Arabian king, the torture revelations are landing on the American conscious with all the impact of a fluffy feather.

It seems to me that the reason for this universal lack of popular outrage is simple, and it's not the conclusion that Politico reaches in its story. Politico suggests Obama is getting an easier ride on cultural affronts than Clinton did because the country is getting more liberal, and upcoming generations don't have all the hangups that the Baby Boomers did about late-night television and respecting foreign leaders. That might also be true, but the "more liberal" theory doesn't explain the general shrugs with which ongoing revelations about our program of torture are being received.

Here's my argument for why both the Bush and Obama administrations suffered, and are suffering, less widespread scrutiny and criticism for their crimes and misdemeanors than Clinton or any previous administration of the past several decades: It's because Americans no longer have a coherent, broadly recognized and heeded structure for receiving and understanding the news.

Two phenomena -- the fragmentation of news sources brought on by cable and the digital era, and the "hyperlocal" movement among newspapers that has essentially banished national and world news from the front pages of all but the biggest dailies -- have resulted in a widespread mainstream disengagement from the news of the day. When big chunks of us get our news from the Fox network, and big chunks of us get our news from MSNBC, and those of us who still subscribe to local newspapers find largely parochial coverage from within a day's drive of the reporting staff, there is no medium or institution that foments and moderates a national conversation.

Clinton's scandals were on the front pages of most newspapers in the 1990s. Bush's scandals were relegated to inside wire pages or briefs. Coverage of first three months of Obama's administration has been similarly kaleidoscopic: Throughout their days, most Americans receive and personally assemble tiny shards of news from talk radio, cable news, word of mouth, RSS feeds, etc. Each of us builds from these fragments a different impression of the world, an individual view of events that skews to our personal interests (kite flying, NASCAR, whale watching) and leaves all but the most politically engaged of us with the sparest impressions of public issues and events.

We no longer have national conversations about the most important questions -- like how should we deal with our recent legacy of torture -- because no majority of us is seeking or receiving the same reliable information from the same set of trustworthy sources.

People have celebrated the digital age for the liberating effect it's had on all of us as consumers of information. We are all free to seek and receive the kind of information we want, when we want it. The traditional gatekeepers, the "mainstream media," which used to inform and guide our civic conversations, are decreasingly influential. One result of this is that more information is available than ever before, and that a select few can't determine what we see and know as a national community. But another result is that, while we can see and know whatever we want, there is no national community to deliberate over what we know.

As newspapers continue to shrink and die, concerned journalists and citizens are wondering who will ask the tough questions, hold officials accountable, and provide the kind of information we need to make good decisions that sustain our democracy. But I don't think our major problem is that there will be less journalism. All these stories are out there. There's plenty of information available about torture, plenty of information about Obama's friendly handshake with Hugo Chavez. More people than ever are asking questions, digging up facts and publishing information that make powerful people uncomfortable.

The big challenge for journalism going forward is not whether it will get done, but how we can get a critical mass of people to pay attention to it. Because right now the future of journalism appears to be thousands of trees falling in the forest, and no one hearing a sound.

Lipstick on the press

The national news media, especially the cable and broadcast news media, might as well go ahead and put big "tool" stickers on their foreheads for the duration of the presidential election. Their complicity and delight in helping divert the American public from substantive issues has been evident throughout the primary season this past year, and -- despite the extraordinary stakes in this election -- it continues apace.

The latest and perhaps most egregious example is giving credence to the McCain campaign's objectively bogus claim that Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig the other day when Obama repeated a cliche he's often used ("You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig") when discussing McCain's economic policy. Obama was clearly referring to economics and had not even brought up Palin so far in his remarks when he used the refrain -- one that McCain has also used this year in criticizing Democratic policies. But the McCain people are smart enough to know that, since Sarah Palin recently brought up lipstick to distinguish hockey moms from pit bulls, they could then accuse Obama of sexism and tie up a couple of news cycles.

News outlets like CNN took up this cause, despite knowing, and generally pointing out, that the McCain campaign's claim was fabricated. It doesn't seem to occur to these reporters and producers that when they go ahead and lead news programs with bogus claims, they lend support to those claims and give aid and comfort to their progenitors. See my previous post on research showing that repeating a lie further embeds it in people's heads, even if you prove the lie to be false.

The extraordinary thing is that, even as self-proclaimed journalists wallow in this incendiary crap -- to the exclusion of delving into actual health, tax and national security policy in any meaningful way -- they pretend that they're just along for the ride and have no choice but to cooperate. Watch how CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser introduces the "lipstick on a pig" hoax by saying, "This is what they're arguing about today ... Can you believe it?"



As Obama explains in the clip, he wasn't arguing about lipstick -- he was arguing about economic policy. He had to talk about lipstick the next day because the McCain campaign made up a ludicrous charge and the news stations all started repeating it.

What if these journalists did their jobs, evaluated the truth or falsity of stories BEFORE airing them, and stopped being boxing gloves for whichever campaign is smart enough to distract and delude them from their real responsibilities?

Fortunately, there is some deeper reporting that is bothering to call out the McCain campaign for its carefully crafted and expertly deployed low blows in this election, despite the danger of being called partisan for doing so. Here's an AP analysis, for example.

I need to disclose here that I'm supporting the Obama campaign. I'm not presently affiliated with a news organization. I believe the fate of our democratic republic -- which has been under assault from within as well as without in the past eight years -- rides on the outcome of this election. This is not a partisan belief. It is based on my understanding of the Constitution and of the role that both the people and the press play in deciding the future of our country. If John McCain and his supporters want to convince the American public that they truly have a better plan for restoring this country's strength, security, global leadership and economic stability, let them do it. Let the news media hold McCain and Obama accountable for their records and ideas. Let all the candidates submit to tough questioning from fair-minded reporters, and let the best ideas and leaders emerge.

In the meantime, if this is the best the national political media can do for our country, we might as well consign the very idea of a democracy guided by an informed public to the dust bin of history.

If you don't like it, stop it

Romenesko linked to an interesting speech that Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz gave the other day at Columbia University.

He said a couple of things that would have brought me to my feet, like this:

This election reminds us of something that has too often been ignored: That Washington matters. That government matters. Most of all, that who wins the White House matters. As we have seen over the past eight years, the choice of a president affects the way America projects its power around the world and how the world sees us. It affects who gets health care and at what price. It affects who gets taxed and at what rates. It affects the distribution of wealth in a society where income inequality continues to grow. It affects how we educate children and how we care for older Americans. It affects what this nation does to combat global climate change and therefore the world your children and your grandchildren will inherit.

That's exactly the kind of understanding that leads to substantive political reporting and, ideally, a better informed and more thoughtful electorate. Balz also said this:

Good political reporting devotes as much energy and curiosity to plumbing the state of the country, the aspirations of all Americans, the clash of ideas and the changes that may be realigning the nation’s political power structure, as it does to what candidates say or do on any given day.

That's about context, which lends meaning to the news of the day. Amen.

Here, though, is where Balz lost my sympathy:

My first concern is that we talk more and more about less and less. We seize on trivial developments rather than big ideas. We obsess over process and but not over policy. We over-cover a snide remark by David Geffen about the Clintons and under-cover a major speech. We spend too much time speculating about the future and not enough examining and understanding the present and the past. We write for one another and talk too much to one another. In other words, we are in danger of reducing to an insider’s game the most important set of decisions people are making about the future of our country.

Note the disconnect in this relatively short speech between what Balz says is important (see his first passage) and what he says political journalists do. His acknowledgement of how far off the rails most political reporting is, is particularly disappointing because Balz so clearly understands what it should be.

My advice to Dan, and all the other people currently covering politics but unhappy with the state of political coverage, is: START DOING IT RIGHT.

Balz's lamentation implies a feeling of helplessness, but all it would take for political coverage to improve in this country is for political reporters and their editors to stop complaining about how trivial much of their work is and do the other kind of work instead. Stop talking about how political journalism needs to be better, and make it better. If the Washington Post can't do it, who can?

In fairness, the Post's political coverage is about as extensive as one could hope to find, and although it delves deeply into the inside-baseball, blow-by-blow aspects of electoral politics, it also spends a lot of time on substance, issues, fact-checking and the other elements that make elections historic decisions and not cultural side shows. If everybody covered politics as thoroughly as The Washington Post, Dan Balz wouldn't have to complain.

But every election cycle we watch journalists wring their hands over how shallow, horse-racey and misguided election coverage is, when they're the very people who produce it. It's like going to a restaurant and having the chef complain about how bad the food is there.

Hey, chef, make better food!

Sucking up to pols, vs. socking it to them

I've got another column on the Committee of Concerned Journalists site, this one comparing two incidents of presidential election coverage on cable.

In one case, a network continued flogging a story that its own journalists and analysts were consistently saying was a non-story.

In another case, an anchor didn't let a candidate's surrogate get away with generalizations.

Check it out.

The problem with 'hyperlocal'

I wrote a column for the Committee of Concerned Journalists last week, discussing how being TOO local of a news organization means missing a great deal of national, world and state news with a direct impact on your audience.

Local is the franchise of small and mid-sized newspapers, but it's a bad idea to assume your readers are getting the bigger news they need elsewhere. The best local journalism explains how all the world's events affect and change local communities, and how those communities can have an impact on the wider world.

Local is vital, but context is king.

See the column here.