Where news isn’t made
If I could permanently puncture one pernicious popular journalistic canard it would be this one:
“The quality of journalism would improve if reporters asked more contentious questions of public officials at government-controlled news conferences and press briefings.”
The curious notion gained particular currency following the failure of the big-name news media to expose the flawed intelligence that was the casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and has been reverberating around the echo chambers of Washington media circles, in the wake of Helen Thomas’ ignominious departure.
The latest articulation of the dubious doctrine comes in yet another opinion piece on the Helen Thomas Affair by Jon Ward, a reporter for the Daily Caller subheadlined, “Her tirade was outrageous, but her style is worth emulating.” Writing in the Washington Post, Ward decried the lack of support for two reporters who pressed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the secret CIA drone war in Pakistan a week after President Obama took office. Like if everybody ganged up on Gibbs, he would have broken down and spilled the beans.
Here’s a new flash for members and observers of the Washington Press Corps, (and I would ask aspiring journalists, including my students, to take note): White House briefings are not the place to uncover news. If reporters think they are going to get the inside story on the things the government doesn’t want to talk about by stamping their feet, getting red in the face, and whining that the official spokesperson is not being forthcoming enough about flawed policies, covert operations, or embarrassing lapses, they need to consider another line of work.
We cover government briefings because they are a starting point, not an ending point. Briefings are where announcements and pronouncements are made, not news. They are a place for reporters seek an official comment, a place to put the government’s non-disclosure on the record, a place to ask officials to explain how their deeds match their words. But the expectation that feisty reporters, if they just ask HARD enough questions will elicit more truthful responses, is laughable on its face, and reveals the laziness of some reporters’ thinking.
No reporter worth his or her salt goes to a briefing with the expectation of nailing down the truth. The real reporting is almost always done outside the briefing room. The hard work of actual accountability journalism is about digging, about finding sources, getting documents, uncovering — not just the answers, but also — the questions the government would like to keep secret. The fact is, news organizations pay far too much attention the public briefings, and that in turn, fosters a dynamic of mutual grandstanding that makes both sides look disingenuous. We would be better served if the White House briefings were not routinely televised, and then analyzed like a sporting event in which points are scored and winners and losers declared.
When I covered the Pentagon, I attended almost all briefings because I was expected to by my network. And I did my share of trying to ensure officials, such Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, didn’t get away making unchallenged assertions when the facts seemed to indicate otherwise. But I was never under any illusion that the briefings were going to be where I would make or break news.
And the best reporters pretty much ignored the briefings, knowing they will be thoroughly covered and transcribed whether they were personally present to shout tough questions that the spokesperson will just blow off. I remember one day when I was following the herd of Pentagon reporters into the briefing room, I saw one of my competitors slip his notebook in his back pocket and head the other way. He knew what so many White House reporters seem to have forgotten, namely if he was going to find news that day, it wouldn’t be in the Pentagon briefing room.
