Sound of Crickets Chirping

[billroper]

This column by Larry Simoneaux (who I know nothing about other than what I just read in the linked-to column) does a fine job of encapsulating my feelings about the utter silence from the mainstream press in trying to determine what's the truth of the situation with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I've watched stories on the Internet for the past week since I first heard about Senator Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" on Fox News Channel. That's the only place I can get any information, because none of the mainstream press that should be interested in getting to the truth has reported on it at all that I can find. Just to pick on my hometown papers, the Chicago Tribune hasn't mentioned it at all in their news pages. The Chicago Sun-Times has referenced it twice on the editorial page, here and here. But I'm not really interested in editorializing on the subject. What I want are facts.

I can find blogs like Captain's Quarters which have assembled an impressive recitation of what they say are the facts. But are they telling the truth?

I don't know that. But I'd like to believe that the mainstream press would pursue this story with the same kind of dogged persistence that they've chased after President Bush's National Guard Service Records.

Because I'd like to know the truth.

I really would.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I wish I could find my comment in someone's entry a while ago, and it was a thread filkertom and I filled up with a few tenscore words. But I'll give you the gist because it's equally applicable to comments I've read from both of you:

The press has its weaknesses, its blind spots, and occasional severe lapses in professional competence and ethics, but there isn't a simple partisan bias. Period.

There are loads of stories—dozens, hundreds, thousands even—that you and I think a hardworking press should go out and cover and even put somewhere closer to the front page than 17A. During an election campaign, there are plenty of times when we'd all wish reporters would ditch the horse-race angle and go for something substantive. But that's not what's going to happen. And it's not a horrible sign of bias. It's just evidence of the lens through which reporters and editors view the world: "What's the news value of this? What's the angle?"

Take, for example, the awful mundanity of the horse-race stories we always read about. Why do papers and TV stations cover the horse race and ignore issues? Because the horse-race is news, and more importantly, it's easy to convey the newsworthiness of a political horse race.

Over the past 40 years and more, the press has ignored and undercovered the following stories: the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam, local politicians' undermining of the War on Poverty, the Tet offensive, the reactions of people at home to rising casualties in Vietnam, the end of housing desegregation efforts by HUD, the Watergate break-in, Cointelpro, Ford's vetoes, Carter's inability to politic from the get-go, Arab influences on Congress, Israeli influences on Congress, ... Need I go on? Those stories that you think were covered well only had significant coverage well after the news item really became too big to ignore. Watergate, for example. The Post covered Watergate when most news outlets gave up on it as a two-bit burglary. They accepted the Nixon administration's description of it. Don't worry—there are similar examples of lassitude when Democratic administrations convinced news folks to ignore a story (e.g., Monica Lewinsky). Well, for a time.

One part of the problem is that there are simply too many news items with real news value for any newspaper to cover competently. So editors and reporters have to be selective. A second part of the problem is that many reporters are, frankly, lazy. If a story is easier to convey in a certain manner, many won't probe. The third part of the problem is the worldview of news folk: what's the news value? what's the angle? what's the story? And often the story (especially in politics) revolves around "the establishment." It's either on its feet or staggering. People are underdogs or popular or ... somethingorother.

But sometimes the lack of coverage is professional competence. Remember the rumors of a Kerry intern affair? It all blew up, mostly without significant news coverage, and I'm glad. It had no foundation. For some odd reason—and I really don't know why—a bunch of news outlets decided they wouldn't cover the story without doing some fact-checking. Yeah, fact-checking. And without much substance, they just didn't cover it.

Can news outlets do a better job? Absolutely. TV news is so vapid I can only stand about 30 seconds of it before my head feels like it'll explode. The news "hole" in newspapers is far too small. There are too many Howell Raineses out there willing to sell out their journalistic soul for a few awards and not enough tough city editors training cub reporters. But the silence on one story is an incredibly incomplete picture. Frustrating? I can understand that. Should I begin to list all the other issues that the press has been ignoring? ...