In all the brouhaha over the New York Times’ publishing top secret information on financial surveillance, one thing amuses me in a dark comic way: from my point of view the Big Scoop is one of the great myths of our post-Watergate times. Almost always it is simply handed to you. It takes no guts whatsoever or even, in many cases, much legwork.
That was certainly true in my case. This blog had a small scoop on the UN oil-for-food program. It was the first to announce that lead investigator Robert Parton had withdrawn from the Volcker Commission. How did I get that “scoop”? Someone emailed it to me. Of course, I checked it out. But was it particularly hard work or brave in any way? Don’t be silly. [Well, you did have to get up early for a call from Paris once.-ed. That's true.]
Now my best guess is this new scoop from the NYT arrived in a similar manner, especially since three papers ended up with the story. This means the leaker or leakers simply wanted to make these media conduits for their ideas. Okay. No big deal. This has been SOP for years (although it shouldn’t be). But does this make the publishers, editors and reporters courageous figures suited to be portrayed by Redford and Hoffman in the movies? … Well, I take that back. Maybe it does these days. But it wouldn’t end up an heroic film, even if its authors intended it to be. It would be a morass of moral confusion and self-deception. If it were properly made, however, it would end up something like Evelyn Waugh’s immortal satire Scoop.
So why am I writing all this? Only to point out that people who are publishing this material are driven by a self-aggrandizing myth that is not only outdated – it is wrong.
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18 Comments
1. Insufficiently Sensitive:Were it only the inflated egos of the Editors seeking plaudits from their blue-state constituents at cocktail parties in the Hamptons (and of course the lionizing biographies and films to come later).
There’s more, and only Dan Rather has felt any consequences for it so far. That’s the abuse of media power, as in using the bully MSM pulpit as a weapon to undermine an elected Administration.
The NYT and LAT have simply escalated the black journalism to the point of breaching national security, in their desperate attempts to prevail no matter what the cost to the body politic.
Jun 27, 2006 - 8:32 am 2. Fresh Air:Lots of myths are operative in the dwindling newsrooms of the MSM. The worst of all, of course, is that Woodward & Bernstein’s shoe-leather reporting brought down a president. It contributed to be sure, but it was Howard Baker who said, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” It was not the press that forced Nixon to resign, it was members of his own party.
Nor, as we now know, was the reporting they did particularly difficult or courageous. They were simply retailing something a disgruntled, two-bit bureaucrat known as “Deep Throat” handed them on a silver tray. Flag in the flower pot? You have got to be kidding!
Sadly, these disgraceful mediocrities who work for our “papers of record” are still out there, like Robert Shaw in Jaws, trying to catch the really big one. They are ignorance squared–of history, of the press’s role in it, of their own importance. It is pathological narcissism that drives much of this, with a healthy sense of hatred of the United States and this president.
These people need serious help. They are depraved. Perhaps they’ll use mental illness as an excuse at their trials?
P.S. The comment thread on this at LGF is at nearly 1,200 comments. If the twin Slimes wanted to rile up the Republican base, they couldn’t have picked a better way of doing it. Nice work, guys! Perhaps they should look up “unintended consequences.” Hint: The previous entry is “Plame, Valery,”
Jun 27, 2006 - 8:37 am 3. David Thomson:ìThe worst of all, of course, is that Woodward & Bernstein’s shoe-leather reporting brought down a president.î
Letís give credit where itís due. I am willing to give Woodward and Bernstein an A+ for effort. They would have not likely pursued this story so relentlessly if a Democrat was in the White House—but these two reporters still did work their rear ends off. That is beyond dispute. And yes, todayís big stories are often given to an ideologically compatible journalist on a silver platter. At the most, the reporter might have to pick up the lunch check at a discretely located restaurant.
Jun 27, 2006 - 9:21 am 4. shannonlove:The only thing that makes major media “major” is its traditional monopoly on the physical infrastructure for large scale information dissemination. Its not the quality of its investigations that made the Times huge but rather the scale of his industrial presses and its distribution system. It acquired the large physical assets only by the virtue of its geographical location.
People leak information to the Times not because they expect or want a thorough vetting of their story but rather because they know that the Times physical assets will assure the widest possible dissemination of their story.
With the rise of the internet, the physical infrastructure is no longer very important to spread of information. The Times and other old media have lost their true competitive advantage.
Jun 27, 2006 - 9:48 am 5. Kevin Peters:Roger:
The press is trying to justify their aid to the terrorist network by bringing up past press “heroism.” Dean Baquet, the editor of the LAT, tries in vain this morning to wrap his shame in the flag of protecting his readers. He lamely describes the struggle he went through in deciding to publish. Oh, the poor man, I pity the mental anguish he must have struggled with. He digs up the Bay of Pigs and the Pentagon Papers as examples of why he had to publish. What a load of crap.
The only way to justify these analogies is to try to make these examples equivalents. The Bay of Pigs was an ill concieved action introduced during the Eisenhower administration and carried out by the Kennedy administration. Whatever ones feelings are about Castro, a mini Stalin IMHO, one could rationalize that exposure of this amatuer disaster could have produced good results. Informing Al Queda or any other terror group the exact details of how their money is being tracked only produces one result, it helps them evade detection. It helps them hide, it helps them to kill our soldiers and it helps them in their dreams to commit some variation of the 9-11 attacks somewwhere in the world. Thats all. That is the only benifit that will result from the actions of the LAT, NYT, and the WSJ.
The NYT decided to iniatiate a pre-emptive strike against possible government abuses by exposing the Bank Tracking program. They decided that , in their words, “the potential damage” to our terrorist tracking abilities was worth the risk because of the fear of big government intrusion into our privacy. Whats next. Are they going to help terrorists escape capture out of fear that another Abu Ghraib “might happen.”
The press decided that terorists should be let loose upon the world rather then let the government know about their international money transfers. They traded the lives of humans for the privacy of their bank book. In short, they trust the terrorists more then they trust our government. It’s because they have bought into the myth that the war is not real so that the prosecution of this war is worse then the actions of the Islamo Fascists.
When the next attack on our soil happens, when the first responders are digging through the rubble to find body parts for identification, the LAT and the NYT can tell the survivors relatives that at least they can rest easy and know that their Money Market Managers were able to transfer the deads’ assests without excessive government knowledge. I am sure that those words will help those grieving people through their sleepless nights.
Jun 27, 2006 - 10:32 am 6. MisterSnitch:Mr. Simon is SO dead-on here, it’s scary. As someone who lived in a corrupt town (our mayor eventually went to jail) just outside Manhattan (Hoboken), I begged the Times, for years, to run various stories I’d researched on the type of fraud and theft that was routine here. No go. Finally, Alan Cohen (then of the New York Press) assembled a story, only to have his paper’s management shoot it down (reportedly, they were afraid of the mayor’s lawyers). The Jersey Journal did run one uncredited article, a he-said/she-said piece on blackmail involving Stevens Institute, but only after a state senator (who was pushing a candidate for office running against the mayor) got involved. Naturally, it was dismissed as an election ‘tactic’ and the paper never followed up.
Following up real government corruption does take guts, and very few papers do it. But they want to keep that myth alive, and win some awards if possible. This ‘proves’ they’re ‘doing their job’, after all.
The only way to get action against our corrupt administration was to force it from office. I quit an advertising job and created a series of marketing campaigns for ‘reform’ candidates that accomplished this, over a period of three years.
Once I was talking to a fellow on the sad frustration of trying to get the press to follow up with stories like these. He said something like, ‘Too bad they don’t do their job’. But what IS the job of the press? The job of the press is to make enough money to remain solvent, and publish another day. The ideal of the press is to keep watch on those holding power, and to discover the truth regardless of risk.
The press pretends that their everyday job involves holding up this ideal. It doesn’t, and it’s this pompous pretense that Mr. Simon, myself, and apparently many others, deeply resent.
Jun 27, 2006 - 10:37 am 7. Kevin Peters:Roger:
“But we have an obligation to cover the government, with it’s tremendous power, and offer information about it’s activities so citizens can make their own decisions.” Dean Baquet, Editor, L.A. Times. Tuesday, June 27th.
Dean, don’t try to foist your decision onto me. You own it. You decided to give the terrorists the heads up, not me. You did not give me or anyone else the option to “decide.’ You informed Bin Laden and you did it on your own so don’t try to drag the rest of the country in your private decision. The cat’s out of the bag, the ‘people” never had the option of deciding or making a decision.You did it and there is no going back, whatever the public decides. We can’t vote for you, no one ever gave you decision making powers and you did this for yourself and your ego, not for me or anyone else. You arrogant fool.
Jun 27, 2006 - 11:00 am 8. dclydew:I still say that the Administration is blowing thhis out of proportion. Dangerous people apparently already assumed that their assets and transactions were being monitored (as with the phone calls from months ago). Intelligent people who understand the state of technology today, also assumed that the government was doing something akin to this.
The media reports, reported and will report on what sells paper. If the American public didn’t want the latest scandal spewed across the NYT, they wouldn’t buy the papers. If this crap didn’t sell, (aka if many americans didn’t approve) then they wouldn’t publish this stuff.
We can argue wisdom and ethics, but this issue seems to be spun by everyone, I guess its a question of who’s garbage you choose to eat.
God I hate election years.
Jun 27, 2006 - 12:36 pm 9. Kevin Peters:dclydew:
Jun 27, 2006 - 12:56 pm 10. dclydew:I imagine the banking institutions that have been exposed in detail by the press are jumping for joy at the prospects of being targets for the terrorists for cooperating with the United States. It is one thing for them to know that they they are being followed in general, it’s quite another thing to know the exact details and the exact institutions that are being used. If one of these Swiss banking institutions or any of their employee’s are kidnapped and beheaded I am sure that they will send their love to Mr. Keller for fingering them. And I am sure that any other institution that is approached to help in the hunt for these thugs will not think a minute about the fact that if given a chance the self appointed mandarins of the press will turn them in and print their names and corporate address in their fishwraps. Do I know for sure that this will happen? No, but you and the NYT don’t know that it won’t. And there is no way for you or the press to know that they have given a terrorist or their financers a heads up and let them escape detection. The negative possibilities of this disclosure far outweigh any potential benifit for the public. How are you better off because of this disclosure? And please don’t give me vague cliches about openess. What specific danger did this program being exposed protect you from?
Kevin,
A very valid point. However, I never said that this was beneficial (except to the NYT’s bottom line) and I certianly never said that their actions were in any way protecting me.
I said only that I felt the administration was spinning this for maximum effect, at the expense of honesty.
However, as I said, you bring up a very valid point.
Jun 27, 2006 - 1:22 pm 11. George:The biggest propagator of the Watergate myth is none other than Bob Woodward. He persistently downplays any big story as, in his opinion, no story can ever be bigger than Watergate. This was particularly true when Drudge was coming up with all the scoops on Clinton (lying under oath, stained dress, etc.). Virtually every sentence out of Woodward’s mouth downplayed those incidents during that era.
By the way, much of what Woodward and Bernstein reported was not second sourced. They did what most reporters will tell you is forbidden by the Golden Rules of reporting. They don’t want history to remember that either. They just want you to remember two super reporters just doing their job.
Jun 27, 2006 - 1:39 pm 12. Chris Fotos:Can’t agree with you on this one, Roger. As disgusting as the NYT scoop was, I rather doubt it just came floating across the transom absent a long period of building trust with national security sources who know they’re breaking some serious law here. The one or two really big scoops I got in my old aviation trade-journalism days only came after many many many months of working with sources to the point where they started believing I knew what the hell I was talking about and wouldn’t screw them as sources. I’d be stunned if this were any different with far more at stake at the Times. (or LAT. Or WaPo. Etc.)
That’s legwork even if it doesn’t involve, well, legs.
Jun 27, 2006 - 1:44 pm 13. Mark Poling:dclydew, the program apparently did produce results, so blowing it certainly is, well, a blow. (And I hope you realize that a lot of potential leads into the terrorist networks aren’t necessarily the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree — case in point one famous flight school student who wasn’t interested in learning how to take off or land.) Of course, now even the most clueless oil-wealthy medievalists know not to do a straight funds transfer to that Madras in Minneapolis.
Be that as it may, the Administration has another reason to flog this; leaks from within our own intelligence community are helping the jihadis.
What I want to know is, when are leakers going to start going to jail?
Jun 27, 2006 - 2:49 pm 14. Peter G.:Ah, Scoop. This book has stood the test of time. A selection from Scoop by Mr. Waugh:
“Why, once Jake went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns … Well they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. They arrived in shoals. Everything seemed quiet enough, but it was as much as their jobs worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Government stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny — and in less than a week there an honest to God revolution under way, just as Jakes had said. There’s the power of the press for you.”
“They gave Jake the Nobel Peace Prize for his harrowing descriptions of the carnage …” – Evelyn Waugh, 1938.
Jun 27, 2006 - 5:39 pm 15. LarryD:The American Thinker points to this article. To quote the Amirican Thinker:
This program had already led to the capture of at least one terrorist leader. Thanks to the NYT, this program is, or very soon will be, dead. No, Bush didn’t overstate anything, if anything he’s still not calling it by its true name. Treason. “or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”
Jun 27, 2006 - 6:03 pm 16. Robert Schwartz:Ironically, a NYT editorial, soon after 9/11, called for exactly the kind of program the SWIFT investigation was.
The humorous thing is that the MSM thinks they are the playas, when in reality they are the hos for the bureaucrats who use them to launch their attacks.
Jun 27, 2006 - 6:37 pm 17. Percy Dovetonsils:I think what the government needs to do now is run two separate counterintelligence efforts – one against the “bad guys” (al-Queda and the Al-Queda-keteers, the Saudis, the Syrians, the Russians, etc.), and the other against the hostile press (the Times, the Post, etc.).
Give each enough bait to keep them interested and chasing into blind alleys. Much like the catnip mice we Dovetonsils give to the cats in our house, which they promptly knock under the radiators, causing them to spend countless hours trying to figure out how to get them out.
As long as the press (and our cats) don’t grow opposable thumbs, they should be kept busy for hours, while the real work is getting done.
Jun 28, 2006 - 9:06 am 18. Joachim:Roger
Your point about how easy it probably was to do this story is more relavant than can be imagined. It seems to point an arrogance and laziness on the part of many members of the MSM.
Also, since 9/11 (as someone else noted) the NSA and SWIFT programs (or something similar) would almost certainly be implemented to track down the terrorists. I have worked for German companies and have talked to my colleagues in Germany occasionally. NSA is possibly aware of me but because my conversations did not have any useful information, they could careless about me. I am not concerned about the authorities visiting to discuss these conversations – there is nothing to hide. I am more concerned that two useful anti-terrorist programs have probably been crippled because of the arrogance of the MSM than a very theoretical impingement of my rights and freedom.
Jun 28, 2006 - 11:32 am