The problem with too many journalists — and especially those journalists inside the Beltway — is this: they do not write what they’re thinking. The reporters do not tell us what they know. The columnists and analysts do not tell us what they believe. Their resulting work is boring, uninformative, and manipulative.
Today at the Republican convention, Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for the first President Bush who now writes a column for the Wall Street Journal, got caught by a mike that I guess she thought wasn’t on. She was talking with Republican strategist and former McCain associate Mike Murphy. Here’s Salon’s transcription of the exchange:
Apparently referring to some of McCain’s current advisors, Murphy then says, “These guys, this is all like how you win a Texas race — you know, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work.”
Noonan can then be heard agreeing with Murphy, saying, “It’s over.” A little later, Noonan responds to a question about whether Palin was the most qualified woman McCain could have chosen. “The most qualified? No,” Noonan responds. “I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives … Every time Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”
(You can watch the video and read a full transcript over at TPM.)
Now, if Peggy Noonan wrote a column every week that was as honest with her readers as she is here, with her colleagues, when she thinks the microphone is off, I would read it religiously. She’s part of a world that I don’t inhabit. But now I have a bright picture of the fact that she’s not writing what she knows and believes.
I know columnists are people; they have relationships to protect; they want insiders to keep talking to them. Still: virtually every journalist in DC could go a lot farther down the road of writing what they know and think. Doing so would probably earn them more respect, and more readers, and the sources and players would end up talking to them anyway.
We went through this five years ago when Laurie Garrett, a talented reporter, sent an email to her friends from Davos telling them about the big conference there in blunt, unvarnished and informative terms. Then she freaked out because this report — in which she was doing exactly what she ought to have been doing in her role as a journalist — became public and embarrassed her.
Here is some of what Noonan published today in the Journal about Palin:
Gut: The Sarah Palin choice is really going to work, or really not going to work. It’s not going to be a little successful or a little not; it’s not going to be a wash. She is either going to be magic or one of history’s accidents. She is either going to be brilliant and groundbreaking, or will soon be the target of unattributed quotes by bitter staffers shifting blame in all the Making of the President 2008 books. Of which there should be plenty, as we’ve never had a year like this, with the fabulous freak of a campaign.
So: in print, it’s up in the air. But in truth, “it’s over” and the McCain campaign got seduced by “bullshit about narratives.”
How can anyone ever read a word by Peggy Noonan again and take it seriously? (And she’s been around the block long enough not to get too much sympathy for, you know, not knowing that microphones can betray you.)
If her editors had any respect for their readers, they’d fire her.
UPDATE: Noonan says the excerpt was edited or truncated and that her “it’s over” did not refer to the McCain campaign or the Palin nomination. I don’t know if that’s true; hope we can find out. Even if it is, she still expressed herself far more directly, bluntly — and persuasively — when she thought she was off-mike. That’s really my point.
Post Revisions:
- December 12, 2008 @ 10:43:23 [Current Revision] by Scott Rosenberg
- September 3, 2008 @ 19:30:35 by Scott Rosenberg
So what you are saying is you would only read her if she wrote something you agreed with?
The Hope and Change line is a bullshit narrative too, and either it works or it doesn’t. It happens to be working [thanks to a totally supine press corps and an audience who are totally blinded by race]. Liberal writers who only read sources they agree with think the law of gravity has been repealed.
As soon as the narrative collapses: “Wait, this guy is a totally unqualified con man…” things will get fun. Just wait.
“If her editors had any respect for their readers, they’d fire her.”
This open mic story is making the rounds of the blogs because it’s a “smoking gun” for the whorehouse that is mainstream journalism, and not just conservative journalism. But really, compared to what we’ve seen the last few years and even decades, this is trivial. When the Valerie Plame treason was breaking I posted that I felt that the D.C. journalists knew exactly what had happened and that they not only knew the circumstances, but were involved in them. That was especially true for the likes of Judith Miller and Robert Novack. But also, in terms of blunt hypocrisy, the greatly admired and respected Tim Russert. I won’t bother with listing the other top name “journalists” who were fully knowledgeable of the Plame information and yet disclosed absolutely nothing to the public they supposedly are directed towards.
But then that’s the key isn’t it? Noonan’s editors aren’t going to fire her. They’d fire her if she wrote the truth in her columns. Same for the television news people. An NYTimes Judith Miller article on aluminum tubes was specifically referred to by Dick Cheney on one of those Sunday morning news shows which turned out to be a circle jerk of self serving, self reinforcing lies that, though only one of the many gross lies that led to the Iraq War (ABC and ‘Iraqi anthrax’), was an example of the horrific nature American press and media has taken on.
There’s no possible way the likes of George W. Bush could have been elected if not for America’s bought and paid for corrupt press. Gore “lied” about inventing the Internet but “W” was a guy you wanted to have a beer with. Carter had the construction sites with the count of days Americans were held hostage but Reagan was the “teflon” president who may have actually conspired with the Iranian hostage takers to prolong the hostage situation and win the presidency.
Come on. This is your profession. Rosen and Gillmor may try to make gentle waves against the oceanic currents of media corruption but nothing will change unless the corporate monopolies that news organizations have become are broken up. Maybe if there were a thousand TalkingPointsMemos and RawStorys and other news organizations actually interested in getting and publishing the factual news Americans would have a chance at making informed judgments and decisions about the direction of their nation.
Right on. As usual, you nailed it.
Jeez, if all of our reporters wrote what they thought, we’d be in a fine mess.
Noonan’s response: http://is.gd/2c2k
I hear her saying that her words “It’s over” were misunderstood as she was not referring to the McCain campaign. And she gives a legitimate explanation as to why the rest of what she said has not been expressed by her before.
Not that I’m a Noonan fan or anything, but figured a link here would be appropriate.
a very concise, well said article that as dave said, nailed it right on the head
Brian: So what you are saying is you would only read her if she wrote something you agreed with?
Uh, I think the point is that her columns would be a lot more insightful if she wrote things she agreed with.
Posting what you think and what you know are not the same. There are degrees of knowing and the amount of evidence backing up your opinion matters. Should you post when you first *suspect* that something is true or wait until you’ve confirmed it? What if your suspicion turns out to be wrong? How damaging would a false story be, versus remaining silent until you have all the evidence?
Noonan doesn’t know how this the election is going to turn out, any more than the rest of us. She says this in her Journal article but not in her private comments. So in that sense, her public opinion in the Journal more truthful (though vacuous) than her private opinion, which is basically bullshitting.
I realize that political commentary is largely guesswork and hunches. However, arguing that Noonan should disclose what she *thinks* rather than what she can prove and is prepared to defend means you’ve bought into the system and no longer care what the truth is, just what other people’s opinion of it is. It’s valuing juicy gossip and hot air over a sincere attempt to figure out how the world works.
However, arguing that Noonan should disclose what she *thinks* rather than what she can prove and is prepared to defend means you’ve bought into the system and no longer care what the truth is, just what other people’s opinion of it is.
Yes, wanting to know Noonan’s opinion is appropriate because she is a commentator, not a journalist. You seem to have the two mixed up, which is pretty critical.
It’s valuing juicy gossip and hot air over a sincere attempt to figure out how the world works.
Except Noonan’s off-mic quote seems to indicate that nothing about what she writes is sincere; that’s the whole damn point of this post. She is NOT being sincere, which is the problem.
All,
I think Noonan is being sincere. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment we might say something that we don’t quite mean. I think her “off-mike” comments was something just like this: she was feeling frustrated about the whole thing, and in one of those “pessimistic, emotional moments” said something to a friend who she knew knew she was speaking out of frustration. Perhaps five minutes later, she caught herself and said, “Hmm… maybe this might not be as bad as I thought”.
In other words, we are human, and this blogpost is flattening out this complexity in route to implying that this shows Noonan is unreliable or untrustworthy.