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January 26, 2005
Tell a different story...
Lori Robertson, of the American Journalism Review, considers the plight of White House journalists who must operate in a tightly controlled information environment:
A rigid approach to staying on message and a clampdown on access for reporters and the public have been increasingly used by the executive branch, a trend that began to take shape during the Reagan administration, if not earlier. The current Bush administration has shown that the method can be perfected, with little to no downside for the White House.
Rhetoric is always open for reinterpretation, so I'd be wary of any claims that rhetorical choices have no downside. The reason we academics treat texts in the present tense (Plato claims such and such...Aristotle responds this and that...) is that we understand that messages don't stop communicating. So let's wait and see. Be that as it may, while I would like to see any administration allow journalists nearly unfettered access to information, I understand the reasons why the Bush administration continues the trend toward message control.
The administration's message control, however, is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how reporters ought to respond to effective message control.
Toward the end of the article, much too late in my estimation (but, then, I would have written a different article), we get this:
Mike McCurry [President Clinton's press secretary from 1995 through 1998] suggests that the press could make some changes as well. When there's such a premium on discipline and message control, he says, it "cries out for some new reporting techniques to break the barrier."
This seems like mere common sense to me. McCurry offers some good advice. Judging by some reporters' reactions to message control, however, McCurry's idea may be more radical than I suppose. Here is my suggestion:
Tell a different story. Yes, the president is news. No question about that. But it seems that the press too often forgets that what a president does (or what government does) affects citizens. Our lives change when governance happens. Want a good story about Social Security? Avoid trying to sort out "private" versus "personal" accounts (unless you're willing to get at the policy behind this semantic snit). Go find out how the facts affect real people. Go discover the facts, and eschew the spin.
The facts are rarely discovered by calling the White House, or some bureaucrat on a short leash, for a comment.
Spin. That's what message control is. The press doesn't need it to do its job well. Spin hurts good journalism. The facts are out there. The people affected by the facts are out there. And they ought to be the protagonists of the real story.
Posted by acline at January 26, 2005 2:26 PM | | Spotlight