July 06, 2004

• Hmmm ... I wonder what would happen to Dubya if he ever made the mistake of agreeing to an interview with John Humphries ... This interview technique seems par for the course ... most UK politicians who end up on the Today programme would expect nothing less. Maybe illustrates a difference between US journalism which appears to be very sycophantic, and European journalism, where politicians routinely get their asses kicked ...
• American journalists are all too afraid of not being able to get another interview with the current administration to ever ask a hard question. I actually would have liked to have seen the interviewer be harded. I mean the minute he brought up 9/11 when they had been talking about Iraq. He didn't say one had anything to do with the other but by bringing them up in the same conversations over and over it creates that confusion in the minds of many. The reporter should have said right then and there, "What does 9/11 have to do with Iraq?"
• I got my whistle out but I was wrong. It's not a great interview, but then I doubt there *can* be a great interview with Li'l Bush. He's in that boxing ring and only knows his usual moves - jab, dance, one-two, dance, hug, repeat. Glad at least one reporter doesn't have any fear at calling him out.
• You know, the bit that pissed me off most wasn't anything on Iraq or international affairs, because I've heard every side on that ad naseum. But what a horse's petui he is to claim how generous his admin has been and how much they have done to prevent the transmission of HIV and the treatment of AIDs. Especially on the heels of this thread, where people who know a great deal more than I do explain just what kind of crap that claim is. (And yes, it probably is true that despite cutting off major organisations the US still donates more money in total than any other single country - but it does have 250 000 million frickin' people! How much does it donate per capita when compared to the rest of the developed world? They keep claiming to be so generous, going on about how much aid they give, when really both Canada and the US give much less than others in comparison to their population and resources.)
• - sorry, I think that it's now over 300 000 frickin' million people. Very nice people, of course, but still so many of them that any claims of generosity for giving more than countries like, say Belgium (10 million), is out and out chicanery.
• "Nobody denies we have an affinity with the United States, but that is a different matter from having an affinity with the president," Ms. O'Rourke said in Parliament this week. Ms. O'Rourke is my new favorite person.
• I just wish she had tried to gouge out his eyes with an 8-inch black dildo. That would have topped the interview off nicely, IMHO.
• Seemed to me that she gave up halfway through.
• Blowhard journalists are as bad as sycophantic ones. Neither serves their audience, and neither upholds the duties of the fourth estate.
• Too bad this one wasn't a blowhard, eh Fes?
• Isn't this the same reporter who kept interrupting him and yelling during the press conference? I don't have real player.
• you might be thinking of the french version, Fes - the "whistle" link up there is the MoFi thread on that one.
• Oh, sorry. Never mind then. Got my reporters crossed.
• Interested by your first comment Fes ... And wonder if you could elaborate ... I completely agree if you are objecting to interviewers who give politicians a hard time just for the sake of it ... But surely the 4th estate is doing its job if it's asking tough questions in order to get politicians to reveal facts they'd rather hide ...
• One of the main duties of the 4th estate is to provide a check on government, and asking tough questions is a huge part of that. I have no problem at all with tough questions, and wish the press overall would dispense with the "If you were a tree, which tree would you be?" horseshit that dominates typical reportage, esp. the TV press. At the same time, there's no call either to be blatantly antagonistic. The primary duty of the press, after all, is to provide information to their audience. We can bandy all day about bias and whatnot, but it often seems that the "tough" reporters are too churlish to actually obtain the information they are supposed to be getting. If the source won't answer your question because you've been a bitchcake in the asking of it, you've failed as a reporter. Now, granted, Bush has been adept at dodging straight answers (much like most politicians, I'd haten to add); that's not the press' fault. If they ask and he doesn't answer, or dissembles? That's not the fault of the asker. But it *is* their duty to seek out the information elsewhere and report it if the interviewee isn't forthcoming, not throw a hissyfit and complain that Bush is a booger. Yep, he is. Find a source that will talk, or turn in your press card and start a column.
• Bush has been adept at dodging straight answers well, fes, it's a bit more problematic than that. there's a great new yorker piece on how this administration has basically refused to deal with the press. i found the link but now there's a problem with it. sigh. i'll link when i can.
• I get the NY'er, and will read the article. He doesn't play nice with the press, certainly. But his refusal to deal is his prerogative, neither illegal nor, in his case, considering his policies, a bad idea :) It does make it harder for the press (believe me, I know - former reporter and news director) - but it does NOT abrogate their responsibilities to the public.
• i think the press is still trying to ask tough questions, bush is either A) not answering or B) not presenting the opportunity for the press to ask. rumsfeld is even more adept at this. but it's backfiring on him now -- those in the pentagon he's alienated are leaking VERY juicy tidbits that are getting him into a lot of trouble.
• (BTW, all the reporters around me in our d.c. news bureau ask hard questions all day long of not only the administration but also their own congressional delegations. as for me, i stick to fun/quirky human interest stories... thank goodness!)
• good example of bush's refusing to deal with certain questions -- or people asking them
• I dunno, I see the press mostly either acting far too collegial or far too antagonistic - and precious little of the more substantive middle ground. Most newspapers are so clotted with opinion and, at the same time, so arrogant in their assumption that they continue to reign unchecked as the dominant information source, that they've forgotten that the privileges they enjoy - the access, the immunity, the implicit trust - come with responsibilities.
• Whilst the UN's target for foreign aid is 0.7% of every member country's GDP, the US currently gives 0.1% of its GDP as aid.
• For four decades the White House correspondent for United Press International, Mrs. Thomas, 82, has in recent months harangued Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, asking how President Bush can slaughter innocent Iraqis in a quest for oil. Now syndicated by Hearst Newspapers, Mrs. Thomas has also denounced Mr. Bush outside the confines of the White House briefing room. "This is the worst president ever," Mrs. Thomas told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., in January. "He is the worst president in all of American history." Oh, boo. Poor Ms. Thomas. She is NOT the press! She is a reporter with an ego. Perhaps she was snubbed. Perhaps, on the other hand, she should consider doing her job (that'd be reporting) rather than maintaining herself as a "tradition."
• At 82? She also may want to consider retiring, as she has forgotten that reporters don't *give* interviews, the interview other people and then write down the things that they say.
• Thomas is *exactly* the sort of reporter that I was describing a few comments up - arrogant, neglectful of her audience and the basic tenets of what constitutes journalism, churlish and, ultimately, unable to give her employer and her readers what they have contracted her to deliver - the news.
• This is not to say that Bush was right to ignore her questions - the President (any president) has a duty to his contituency (us) to give over as much info on his administration and government as he can. But in this I am reminded of the Chris Rock bit about OJ, where he goes "I don't *condone* that he killed his wife... but I can *understand* it." Alright, I've said enough, y'all talk now :)
• it's not that the press ain't tryin', fes...
• Fes, Helen Thomas is retired, officially. She retired when the Moonies bought out UPI. She goes to the White House to cover major world events now, and she's one of the most respected journalists in the history of the Washington press corps. The quote about Bush was in an interview she gave with another journalist, not in one of her own articles. She's been front and center in the White House for decades, and with good reason -- she earned her spot there. Personally, I think she's entitled to express her opinion on the record when somebody asks her, regardless of age or standing. That doesn't make her a bad journalist.
• what mid said. also, of interest, "A daily chronicle of news in homeland security and military operations affecting newsgathering, access to information and the public's right to know." WE'RE AT WAR, YOU KNOW. can't bother with these pesky journalists, damn it.
• oh also for those interested that new yorker link is back up here interesting analysis of what we're up against
• I must continue to respectfully disagree with you both :)
• well, the great thing about journalism is it's very subjective. these very discussions go on in newsrooms across the country, every day. it's nice to know that readers care, too!
• SideDish - thanks for that news site. I've been looking for pretty much that exactly for a while now.
• Wow ... we pressed Fes' buttons:-) Interestingly I seem to be a cross between Fes and Sidedish, started out as a radio reporter with an interest in politics and became a 'wacky story' reporter when I became disillusioned with political reporting ... and then got out of reporting altogether ... so I agree with bits of both of you. Seems to me (from a UK perspective) that while the media has come a long way from the investigative days of Woodward and Bernstein, politicians have much less respect for the media's right to question their decisions. We saw this in the UK with the row over the flawed but essentially accurate report by Andrew Gilligan about whether the govt lied to the public about Saddam's WMD in their dossier. The face-off between the BBC and the government muddied the waters of reporting a very important story. The govt's accusations against the BBC were rapidly personalised, and as a result, the story became the row between the BBC and the govt, and not whether the govt inserted a claim that Saddam could launch WMD against us within 45 minutes, knowing that it was inaccurate. So you're both right really.
• BBF: thank you for doing the research - that's a page I must remember. And the random small country I pulled from my head should have been Denmark, which has only 5 1/2 million people. What a wonderfully generous country. We should all try to be more like the Danish. So I'm off to read Beowolf.
• In regards to Fes' comments about manners and reportage. I get the impression that there's a somewhat different culture to conducting political interviews on this side of the Altantic (at least in the UK). The standard here tends to be that reporters feel it is their responsibility to ask antagonistic and 'difficult' questions. It would be unthinkable for politicians to be offended by such questions here. They meet them head on and try to answer them as best they can, understanding that there is nothing personal about it, it's just the reporter doing their job. I understand that this reporter might be criticized for not understanding the culture of their interviewee. However, I would have thought that this reporter would have considered refusing to ask hard-hitting questions to be a breach of trust with her profession and her audience.
• (jb: "300 000 frickin' million people" So, 300 billion? 300,000,000,000? 300 million, isn't it? I'm just being anal, but is that a non-metric way of counting? Imperial? Just curious. Math was never my thing, but I'd be sad to discover after all these years that I was really bad.) As a Canadian, I've always viewed the major American media outlets as mouthpieces for whatever administration exists in the US at the time. CNN, Fox, whatever. They all seem to adore and worship their leaders. At least compared to Canada. I don't see anything wrong in how Bush was interviewed in this particular instance. He wasn't giving a speech, he was being interviewed. He was being asked questions. I don't recall learning in journalism school that we had to listen to the interviewee ramble on and on about things that had absolutely no relevance to the question. Last time I checked, Iraq and 9/11 had no connection. You don't have to be a major in Islamic studies to know the secular Saddam and the fundamentalist Osama didn't see eye to eye. The 9/11-Iraq connection was (and still is) an act to fool ignorant Americans who think "Arab" and "Muslim" are interchangable terms. But I digress. When that sort of nonsense starts dribbling out, it's time to put some focus back into the interview. It wasn't a tea party. I'm sure Bush's ego will recover.
• here's the latest from helen thomas, in case anyone is still interested... highlight: "I think we have a government that absolutely is ignoring the truth and a press that is ignoring the truth," she said