Poor incentives for journalism favors Obama

Amol Kapila

Writing books about the Obama Administration is a lucrative business for journalists, particularly those who can get inside access. From the Washington Post:

When it comes to pursuing sources, the authors who work for major news organizations have a key advantage. They are in regular touch with Obama aides for their day jobs and can obtain tidbits by agreeing to embargo them until their books come out. But they also face a delicate balancing act, since tough stories might alienate potential sources and flattering ones might loosen tongues.

The last sentence indicates that there may be some quid pro quo going on, in which journalists provide favorable coverage or withhold bad news so that they can preserve their relationships with Administration insiders.

Glenn Greenwald reacts to this Post article for Salon, writing

That’s an understatement. Those oozing conflicts lead to things like this– a glowing New Yorker profile of Rahm Emanuel so sycophantic it made the skin crawl — followed up by an even more one-sided love letter to Larry Summers, both from the eager, wanna-be White House stenographer/author Ryan Lizza. It’s what causes Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter to proclaim one day (when Obama favored it) that real health care reform "depends on whether Obama gets approval for a ‘public option’," only to turn around less than two months later (once Obama said it was unnecessary) and proclaim that the Left is foolishly obsessing on the un-important public option.

In fact, journalists could withhold negative stories that might result in more revenue for their news organizations, only to reveal them in their book, thereby using their employer’s heft in order to gain inside access, denying their employer the benefits, and pocketing the gains for themselves, all the while denying the American people of honest analysis.

From a publication called the Washington Note:

Edward Luce, Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times, who has been one of the few to resist the ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ offers from the White House has found himself in a dust-up with the White House for his recent article co-authored with Daniel Dombey, "US Foreign Policy: Waiting on a Sun King".

Luce was given access to one senior official for the piece, but because Luce reported that National Security Adviser Jim Jones may be on his way out and that Obama’s national security team lacks a top tier strategic thinker — other than Obama himself perhaps — Luce has been pummeled by the White House who think he violated a quid pro quo deal to do a fluff story in exchange for access.

Luce reported to me, "The FT never does these kind of deals. "

Chris

April 7th, 2010 at 4:48 PM · Reply

Bob Woodward (now associate editor) at the Washington Post is a case in point of a journalist who must have been faced with his duty to report contemporaneously in his paper versus keeping it for his next book. The New York Times infamously was confronted with a journalist Judith Miller who it seems was “played” by the Bush administration in the lead up to the Iraq war, and as a result (along with other factors) the paper was not skeptical enough, for which it later apologized. The relationship between a journalist and his/her sources is complex, requiring trust, judgment and continuous skeptical reassessment. This too is where editors come in.

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