Needless to say, this wasn’t taken well by some of those she sits with in the White House briefing room. So I reached out to a few reporters to see if anyone would go on the record to discuss Raddatz's quote.
I touched based[sic] with the Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason, who responded via e-mail:
It's only stenography if you make it that way. The White House is a very controlled environment; it can be quite opaque and yeah, very frustrating. I imagine it must be very disorienting after a war zone, or the Hill. But with apologies to Martha, who I respect and like, it's lazy to dismiss the beat as merely steno work. There are many reporters at the White House doing serious, important work in spite of the limitations. There is also a lot of humor and pathos in covering the president, and to call it merely stenography misses something. For reals.
"For reals"? What the hell does that mean? It works neither straightforwardly nor as some sort of deflecting snarkasm. The fact that she considers the "humor and pathos in covering [Junior]" as having intrinsic value does not reinforce her defense; it undermines it. This is the problem with these people -- they have convinced themselves that their job is giving us a "sense" of what it's "like", what Fredo's mood or demeanor happens to be when he's lying to them and evading their questions. Their job (and really, no matter how many times I do it, I still can't believe I have to say it in the first place) should be piercing that opacity Mason mentions, stripping it bare, confronting non-answers and evasive denials with more penetrating follow-up questions. Some do, but most seem not to. And they get pissy when called on it.
CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller also sent an e-mail along, writing:
Sure, I view it as an insult if someone calls me a stenographer. Yes, I take careful notes on everything the President says. But my reports are far more than mere transcripts of those remarks. As a reporter, I boil his comments down to their essence, put them in context and challenge them for veracity.
If Raddatz gets cabin fever covering the President from the White House Press Room, I can understand that. But there’s important reporting to be done here by those willing to endure what can, at times, be a tedious beat. But it’s important work. Does anyone think we’d be better off if reporters didn’t record, analyze and report what the President says and does. Taking accurate notes is part of our job, but that doesn’t make us stenographers.
Well, maybe it's things like this that give off that impression.
Q I want to discuss Iraq at some length with you, but I don't want to rush you on that. So let me get a few other issues out of the way that we haven't spoken with you about in a couple of months. Do you want Attorney General Gonzales to keep fighting to keep his job?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do. I'm a big fan of Al's.
Q Does he need to clarify his testimony?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to get into the specifics of it. I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances. The debate between he and the Senate is something they're going to have to resolve. But I think he has testified truthfully.
Q How do you answer even those Republicans like Senator Specter and Congressman Shays who say that in their view the Attorney General's credibility has been damaged?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't agree with them.
Q Can he remain Attorney General if the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pat Leahy, says point blank he doesn't trust the Attorney General?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've had my differences with Pat Leahy. I think the key is whether or not he has the confidence of the President, and he clearly does.
Q We haven't spoken to you in a hard-news interview since the verdict was rendered in the Scooter Libby case. Let me ask you, have you spoken to your former top aide since his verdict?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I have.
Q And can you tell us anything about that conversation?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've seen him socially on a number of occasions.
Q Do you believe the commutation that President Bush gave Scooter Libby for his prison term was enough, or if you had been President, would you have granted a full pardon?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I thought the President handled it right. I supported his decision.
Q Did you disagree with the guilty verdict in the case?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I did.
Q Even though the President said he respects that verdict?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I still -- you asked me if I disagreed with the verdict, and I did.
Q Do you think Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald went too far in pursuing a prosecution of Scooter Libby?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to go beyond where I have already. The matter is still pending before the courts. There is an appeal pending on the question, and I don't want to elaborate further.
Q Another issue, why did your office stop filing reports about your handling of classified material with the National Archives?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's an executive order that covers that, that was issued in 2003 that makes it clear that the Vice President is to be treated the same as the President, and neither one of them is to file those reports with the National Archives.
Q There's no cover up?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Nothing to cover up.
Q There was an aide in your office who said that one of the reasons you weren't abiding by that executive order was that you're really not part of the executive branch. Do you have -- are you part of the executive branch, sir?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the job of the Vice President is an interesting one, because you've got a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I've got an office in the West Wing of the White House, I'm an advisor of the President, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the Constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I'm actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. I sit as the President of the Senate, as the presiding officer in the Senate. I cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. So the Vice President is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you've got a foot in both branches.
Q But you are principally a part of the executive branch, are you not?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches. Under the Constitution, I'm assigned responsibilities in the legislative branch. Then the President obviously gives me responsibilities in the executive branch. And I perform both those functions, although I think it would be fair to say I spend more time on executive matters than legislative matters.
....
Q Okay. Mr. Vice President, on the issue of Iraq. In a speech last month you said the U.S. must stay in Iraq until we win. Isn't that the kind of open-ended commitment that could keep the U.S. there for years and years?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's absolutely essential that we succeed in Iraq. And the commitment we have made is to complete the mission, in effect, to get the job done, to establish security and to give the Iraqis an opportunity to be able to set up a functioning government -- which they've done -- and to be able to deal with the security situation themselves, which they're on their way of doing.
Q A draft of the joint campaign plan says the U.S. would have to remain there at least through 2009. Does that sound right to you?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to make those judgments. I think those really turn more on the kind of advice we get from the military. We're all waiting to see what General Petraeus produces by way of his report back, in September. But in terms of achieving our objectives, I think it's very important that the United States not withdraw from Iraq, not adopt a posture of some of our friends on the other side of the aisle who are calling, in effect, for accepting retreat as the outcome. I think that would be totally inappropriate. I think it's not necessary. I think we can prevail in Iraq, and I think Dave Petraeus and the troops that are there now are doing a very good job.
Q How long will the surge last?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that depends on how long it has to last. It's set up so that it kicked in, really, this summer. We began to deploy the additional troops in the spring; the final deployment of additional troops occurred in late June, early July. And so the surge right now is at its maximum peak. How long that continues will be a decision the President will make based on advice he gets from General Petraeus.
You get the idea. Knoller can simply tell himself that hey, he asked the questions, it's not his fault if Big Time chose to respond in the usual boilerplate.
Then there's this:
I’ve got to admit I was stunned by the nature, depth and fury of the responses to my blog post yesterday (below) about the Bill Moyers Journal report on the news media and the War in Iraq.
....
Look, all I was saying was that reporters were not willing dupes of - or accomplices to - the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
Most of us try to report honestly and fairly on Administration decisions, intentions and statements. If there were doubts and reservations about those matters, it got reported too.
Clearly, many of you disagree. So at the risk of poking an angry lion – let me try this.
YOU be the reporter!
It’s March 6, 2003. Pres Bush is moving closer to ordering an attack on Iraq.
You’re in the East Room for his primetime news conference – and he calls on you.
What do you ask?
What finely-crafted question do you pose that both serves the public interest and will get a meaningul[sic] response?
Almost to a person, anytime a professionamal journamalist gets their panties in a wad over criticism of their form and function, it is directed at their (putative) customers -- you know, readers, viewers, that sort of thing. Not the editors who change or squash their stories if they're deemed unsuitable for popular consumption, not the politicans who yank their chains on a daily basis, not the clown at the top who routinely makes them the butt of his little jokes. And keep in mind that Knoller's defensiveness here is from seven months ago, way after the usually acceptable "if I knew then what I know now" line. They can't handle it, the notion that Bill Moyers and an informed chunk of the American public might know what they're talking about.
I'm actually inclined to give people like Knoller something of a break, simply because it's all an exercise in futility. Here's the thing -- every White House correspondent could conceivably, on the eve of aggression, asked unrelenting series of incisive, probing questions, and gotten to the real heart of the matter. And it wouldn't have mattered; these people were not going to be stopped by mere trivialities of facts, truth, morality, or any of that. They signaled their intent to invade Iraq with Bush's speech at West Point in June 2002. Everything after that was pro forma positioning, timing the marketing campaign, going through the motions of giving inspections a chance.
The only question I have for Knoller -- since he brought up March 6, 2003 as some sort of critical date -- or any of the rest of the WH press corpse, is what question do they wish they had asked on that fateful day, knowing then what they know now, and more importantly, what good do they really think it would have done. What good do they think they're doing now, knowing what we all know, doing absolutely nothing about any of it, wringing our hands as if some deus ex Obama will lift us out of our own muck?
The media's role is hopelessly debauched for a variety of reasons -- institutional laziness and cowardice, herd mentality, corporate priorities, the knowing gall of politicians, and our own expectations that someone else do something about all this, while we go deeper in hock to shop our way to orgasmic bliss. But if folks like Knoller want to know where to start, a hint is that it's not the thousands of ankle-biters who call him naughty names, but the Armani-suited motherfuckers who use him and his colleagues to circulate lies and burnish their credibility.
1 comment:
Maybe Knoller or one of the other non-stenographers might have taken a clue from mere citizen Cindy Sheehan and asked - What is that noble purpose for which Americans have spent at least a trillion dollars, lost oil tankers of American blood, earned the enmity of more than a billion people and the ridicule of most the sentient world, and committed actions which if taken by another nation we would have roundly condemned as criminal?
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