CNN, MSNBC, FOX Did Not Do It
Our cable “news” organizations did not do it. But The Daily Show did. Is it journalism? It is useful information. From the Washington Post:
So here’s Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq four years ago, describing the situation in a TV interview in September 2003: “We’re not in a quagmire,” he’s saying confidently. “The progress is unbelievable.”
So what about that progress, general? Because here’s Sanchez, now retired, talking about Iraq in a video clip from last October: “There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. . . . There’s no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
The before-and-after videos didn’t air on CNN or MSNBC or ABC. Instead, the revealing sound bites ran back to back on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” The satiric Comedy Central program regularly unearths telling footage ignored or overlooked by the real news guys.
You see, the fact this this guy said one thing then and other thing now may be news.
Also important to the context is why he might have said what he said when he said it. That requires an act of journalism to uncover.
Sanchez qualifies as an important source by almost any journalistic standard. And it is an entirely fair and important reportorial function to point out this discrepancy and ask why.
Now, The Daily Show does not ask why or place much of its fodder into greater or more complex context. It plays for a laugh (cheap at that), but the satire of it encourages the audience to ask why. This is not journalism. Satire can be, however, an important contribution to civic discussion as criticism of the news media and politics.
Tags: journalism, rhetoric, politics
From the WaPo article:
Ah, gotcha journalism becomes satire becomes a basis for (more gotcha) journalism?
How To Beat Tim Russert (2003)
TIM WAS GROWING AN OLD DOG NOW! (2005)
Tim Russert: Stop the Inanity (2007)
Tim… I’m not for gotcha journalism of the Tim Russert sort. But I do think it’s fair to ask the general what changed. Asking doesn’t have to happen by ambush. Send a print guy to do it.
The trouble with Russert is only partly the man himself. The trouble is television.
BTW, I remember the Slate column. I may even have written about it at the time
OK, but then check your headline naming which cable news networks “did not do it.”
The “do it” that The Daily Show did back in October 2007 (and WaPo just wrote about) is not journalism you say. So why would the cable news networks “do it?”
In fact, the complex context cannot be provided on TV, you say, because the medium is the message. But the paper medium hasn’t demonstrated any interest in complex context either.
Help me out here, doc.
Tim… What I think I clearly say is that TDS is dealing satire. What’s lacking here is: 1. A news organization pointing out the two statements, and 2. a news organization providing the proper context for understanding why.
There’s an interesting juxtaposition on analysis the McCain “100 years in Iraq” case between FactCheck.org and Josh Marshall.
Beyond the merits of this particular case, something that drives me nuts about FactCheck and similar efforts like the defunct Spinsanity is how literal their approach is. I think it relates to what you’re saying about explaining why politicians say the things they do.
Sven… Yes. The culture appears to be suffering from a distinct lack of interpretive ability (or from willfully political interpretations). The “why” cannot be approached literally as if by a simple accounting of “facts.” Using Sanchez and an example, someone (not a TV person) needs to sit down and have a long talk with this guy and discover what he was thinking. The McCain quote is somewhat easier because of its proximity in time. His words have quite clearly been willfully misinterpreted for political reasons by the method of selective omission more than overly-literal interpretation..
His words have quite clearly been willfully misinterpreted for political reasons by the method of selective omission
Or, as Marshall argues, McCain was deliberately using a “Step 1, start war; step 2 ….; step 3, profit!” gimmick to avoid the question.
As Marshall says, “If there is an unfair supposition at work here, there is a simple way to find out. Someone should ask McCain how long he’s willing to have us stay in Iraq even if we are sustaining casualties.”
Sven… Yes. An answer to that question would be interesting and instructive.
In fact, the answer to that question would be interesting and informative in the absence of any nonsense about what he did or didn’t say or what the context was or was not. However, there’s every reason to believe that Sen. McCain will not answer that question with any clarity. So we’re all reading tea leaves.
Thanks,
-V.
I agree, it’s a good question to ask McCain how long we stay at the current casualty/fatality rate before we pull out.
I also think Marshall is full of shit when he states (as fact), “McCain does not want to leave Iraq. Period. He wants tens of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq permanently.”
Andy,
OK, here’s a video of CNN’s McIntyre from 2007. McIntyre had been on the air previously as well talking about how Sanchez was “brimming with optimism” in 2003.
Explain what McIntyre is missing. Is it just the juxtaposition of the two video clips shown by TDS? If so, why is the juxtaposition itself newsworthy and not gotcha?
Tim… I don’t claim the juxtaposition is news. I claim it is the starting point for news, i.e. a critical examination following a critical interview with Sanchez.
I said: “You see, the fact this this guy said one thing then and other thing now may be news.” Note the qualifier. An act of journalism must still occur.