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Transcript - August 4, 2006
BRANCACCIO: Welcome to NOW, on the road this week in Aspen, Colorado.
There was a time when being a reporter could be seen as heroic: I walked in on my kids watching "All the President's Men" the other day and there it was: intrepid journalists and editors working tirelessly in pursuit of the truth of Watergate. That was the seventies. Now we're bums: criticized for what did not get reported, such as doubts about the official line in the run-up to the Iraq war or criticized for what did get reported including details on the government tracking of bank data as part of the war on terror. Orville Schell has been right on the firing line where the media and the government clash during a time of war. Schell cut his teeth as a reporter covering Vietnam; he's a renowned China expert; and loyal PBS viewers will have seen some of the TV documentaries he's had a hand in over the years. Schell is currently Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. We caught up with him at this Summer's Ideas Festival at the Aspen Institute.
BRANCACCIO: Orville Schell, thanks for doing this.
SCHELL: Pleasure.
BRANCACCIO: There is a war out there with Iraqi insurgents, a war that some people worry might be perpetual, the war on terror. During wartime, maybe the news media should just get with the program and don't report anything that could be seen as undermining our side, our government.
SCHELL: In my experience—most journalists are—are very patriotic people. They are citizens, too. And, I think editors and publishers in—in my experience go to great lengths to consider whether something is actually harmful to national security or not. So, I think it is a misnomer to presume that the journalists and editors, and producers are somehow unpatriotic, because they publish things, or air things, which don't always make a government look good. There's a difference between making a government look good and national security.
BRANCACCIO: Tell you what, you can make enormous political headway by bashing the press in America these days. The White House spokesman Tony Snow after the New York Times published details of efforts to sift through bank accounts in the war on terror, his construction was something like, the New York Times in this case has put the public's right to know above people's right to live.
SCHELL: Well, I think that, you know, we've entered a very sort of dangerous and—and for me a troubling time when the press has come under great attack. And, I think it grows out of an interesting set of different experiences and understandings of what the press and the media is all about.
On the one had I think the Bush Administration and to a certain degree—Republicans come out of a tradition more of public relations in which communications tries to attain a goal. But, in actuality, we are reporters, and the press come out of an entirely different tradition, which is to follow things wherever they go and try to say things—explain things as we see them.
And, those are absolutely different traditions. So, I think sometimes when the current administration attacks the press, they're attacking it the way any corporation, any government, anybody with a good PR firm would attack anybody who is making them—look other than they wish to look. But—it's very—important I think for Americans to remember that the tradition of the press as an independent watchdog, somewhat feisty, somewhat iconoclastic, and always looking, looking, looking, prying, prying, prying.
This was the notion that our founding fathers laid out, spelled out with utter clarity. And I think we've lost sight of it with this new tradition of public relations, which had gotten all lumped together with the press as just, you know, the media, mass communications. But, they're two very different rivers flowing into that stream of mass communications.
BRANCACCIO: Well, you're not kidding lost sight of it. You've seen the poll research from just this year that says when—the American public is told that journalists do what we do in the public interest to make the country, or the world, a better place, they completely don't buy that. They say that we reporters, when we say that, are either being delusional or are just—lying.
SCHELL: Well, you know, I think there's another sort of phenomenon that's wrapped up in this that insofar as—the media, that's radio, television and newspapers—are commercial, there's a kind of underlying presumption that somehow there is another—there is a different purpose than just presenting the facts and getting to the truth.
BRANCACCIO: Well, that's not a crazy presumption. The idea that maybe—
SCHELL: It—it isn't.
BRANCACCIO: —you know some anchorman on some show in addition to trying to report the truth may also be trying to—provide a space for people to sell stuff.
SCHELL: Well, in fact, that's exactly what's going on. I mean, the media is supported by advertising with the—with the exception of Public Broadcasting—and even Public Broadcasting is more and more reliant upon—corporate sponsors. This everybody knows.You know, what—what—what's a business model that actually allows reports and editors, and producers, to do a good job and to be as independent as possible? And, I think perhaps some trusts, some phila—philanthropy, some other—other ways that would—give our media a little bit of independence from the purely sort of commercial driven imperatives, which I think are—are more and more making us timid, cautious, incapable of standing up to criticisms against us, because we—we fear our livelihood, our air hose will be cut off.
BRANCACCIO: So, I hear you saying that this is not just an apparent conflict of interest, the fact that journalists may report to a corporate master, who have business reasons for doing what they do, but you're saying it actually may be affecting the journalism, worrying about the business model?
SCHELL: I think we're in a very grave crisis where the credibility of the press is at stake, where—people perceive journalists as being somehow disingenuous or having some private interests, or being biased.
And, I think it—it gets back to the fact that, you know, we—we do now in—in America live in the most market driven society that human history has ever witnessed, and it's affected every aspect of our lives. And, it makes notions of independence quite quaint and quite difficult to
BRANCACCIO: Notions of independence in journalism?
SCHELL: Yes. Well, independence of any kind for that matter—independence in the arts.
BRANCACCIO: We're all slave to the market at some level.
SCHELL: Well, we are. I mean, and—and whether you're a journalist or a—a Dean at a university such as I am, we, too, are out on the corner with our tin cup as mendicants. And, we, too, are forced to be entrepreneurial, to fund raise, to—to beg for corporate sponsors. And, I mean, this is part of—life that has crept up like a silently rising tide around all of us. And, nowhere do I think—the effects have been more profound than in the media.
BRANCACCIO: We expect the government to question our motives. It's sort of built into the tension. But, when—
SCHELL: Well, yes and no. I mean, I—I—I think no government loves a prying media that's investigating malfeasance or wrong doing.
BRANCACCIO: Do you see ironies when, for instance, the present administration sets as a goal spreading American values overseas, ideas that include democracy? But, with democracy and theory come a robust news media. Yet, on the other hand a government very uncomfortable with the role of the news media.
SCHELL: Well, you know—in the area that I've studied most sort of vigorously in my life, China—Chairman Mao Tse Tsung once said that, you know, "Pure theory is no better than horse ****." And, I think when we are exporting the theory of democracy and a free press, but not the practice of it, we don't become very credible.
And, I think our credibility around the world right now has—has suffered—you know, quite substantially. Because people do perceive that to be for something in theory, but not to be able to implement it in practice, does—does put you in a somewhat hypocritical cast.
BRANCACCIO: I'm not sure I want to give government ideas on this particular point, but maybe—maybe our government could—look to China, which has really raised this notion of—of censorship of their news media to almost a scientific level.
SCHELL: Well, it's interesting. Of course, China is the master at censoring not only the media, now the internet. The media is the megaphone of the Party and the State. That's an absolutely different notion of the media—closer, I might add, to the idea of—public relations—as a form of communications than of free press.
Our notion is very different. We are not the mouthpiece of anybody. We are trying to be independent.
In theory, fine. In practice when we actually—come up with some revelation that the State doesn't like, we see the effect.
BRANCACCIO: But, you think this is just hyperbole the idea of State censorship in America, but it's not far a leap. I mean, when the New York Times went to press with that there was a—a suggestion from one Congressman that maybe the paper had violated the Espionage Act, and what follows from that is maybe you throw an editor in jail, or a reporter in jail.
SCHELL: I—I think the effects of what—the Bu—Bush Administration has been doing are infinitely more chilling to the spirit of a free press than even they can imagine. You know, again, in China I've had a lot of experience with this, and I know what happens when people become fearful, when—because normally any human being, not just a reporter, would like to be considered a constructive, positive, patriotic citizen. And, they actually believe that their reporting is a manifestation of that. But, when something as powerful as the State, or a President, says that they're actually seditious, insubordinate and aiding and abetting terrorism, unpatriotic, I mean, this has a tremendously undermining effect. And—of course this also makes corporations get weak knees when it comes to supporting this critical sort of extra-governmental watchdog function that—that America is the—has been the champion in—pioneered it—back at the founding of this country.
And—ironically it's to this that so many nations look as a kind of a beacon of good practice.
BRANCACCIO: But, would you say the Bush Administration has been successful? The news media is now cowed?
SCHELL: Yes. I think the Bush Administration's been very successful. I read even Bill Keller, the editor of the New York Times—remar—you know, remonstrations against the government, and in it, I mean, one sees all sorts of self doubting, self questioning—om—ombudsman—self lacerations. I mean, it's the very healthy actually liberal impulse to find whatever fault one can within oneself before blaming someone else. It's not a bad human instinct.
In the world in which we presently live, that is a sign of weakness.
And, you know, people like the—the—Bill O'Reilly or—or the administration, they'll just drive a truck right through there and mow you down.
BRANCACCIO: Orville, where are the politicians in this attack on the credibility of the press, particularly earlier this summer on the New York Times? I mean, they were out there kind of alone. Even the lead Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reed, when it came to the story about sifting through bank records said, "Oh, this is nothing like the sifting through phone records." There doesn't seem to be—many allies for the wretched New York Times, or any other reporter who dares to raise a question.
SCHELL: The fact that there—there are relatively few allies, and that—many politicians can be very pusillanimous when it comes to—to supporting an independent press, it certainly doesn't help. But, then—I think the government itself has amputated many of the functions which it should be performing in terms of hearings and investigations of it's own practices, which puts more onus on the press to do it.
In other words, it kind of gets off shored to the press, because the government loses the capacity—to make it's own corrections and to investigate itself in an honest fashion. I mean—remember there were the Watergate Hearings. It was on television morning, noon and night. The Vietnam Hearings. Hearings on China. I mean, in the old days television could be consecrated to a week of public interest.
There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that that would happen now. It says something about the state of public support for that kind of discussion and debate.
BRANCACCIO: Well, certainly lends credence—you've seen this new book by Eric Bollard, the media critic, calling the news media "lap dogs," saying they rolled over in the face of the present administration?
SCHELL: Well, you know, I—I—I—I don't see reporters and—and most of the press as lap dogs. I do think that what a—the public often misses is that we all work for people as reporters and journalists. And, that if our keepers don't encourage us, support us and, you know, march us off into battle, it's very hard for us to do it alone. And, in my experience, you know—there are—most reports that I know really want to do a good job. They know how to do a good job, and they will do a good job, if they can.
Now, remember when 9/11 happened—remember when Katrina happened. Television, which was in a kind of state of somnambulant, you know—collapse in terms of covering serious news, except for the short news shows, rose to the occasion. You remember in 9/11 what happened. There were no half hour breaks—no commercials—no hour breaks. It was just—they just went to the wall with the best damn coverage they could and they did a very good job.
Now, I know we need commercials. I know television, networks can't operate by just breathing the air. They need financial support. But, it's only to say that I think journalists do know how to do a good job, and want to do a good job.
BRANCACCIO: Well, you know how deep this goes, this sort of misunderstanding of what it is reporters do in America. I was in Ohio not long ago, very conservative clergyman was lecturing me about the media. He says that if we have covered the D-day landings with the same level of scrutiny and vigor that we're covering the war in Iraq, we have lost the Second World War, he says.
Essentially, we need to lay off. We need to promote a little bit more, or at least step back, because we're endangering the national interest is what he was saying to me.
SCHELL: Now, ironically in the war —a—a—in Iraq, the press has been accused of being the lap dog in the run-up to the war, and I think in many ways, we were not aggressive enough in pushing the government and—and trying to find out more about weapons of mass destruction, etcetera.
But, what's so interesting was that we were onboard. We were not insubordinate for the war. We more or less supportive. We withheld judgment. We gave the government the benefit of the doubt, I think to the detriment of the nation as it turned out. But, then when the war began to come a cropper as it has—and the press began to see it was an absolutely nightmarish and un-winnable situation, then that fissure opened up again because they publish things or air things which don't always make the government look good.
BRANCACCIO: There seems to be a longing though, and certainly on the part of the government, but maybe the public for if we could all see things in the same way. Cuz we have our men and women in uniform fighting. We, ourselves, in this country during a time of terrorism may be facing the effects of war here at home. There seems to be a longing for—a simplicity of thought on this stuff. Not the tough questions.
SCHELL: I was recently in Iraq and Baghdad and you talk to soldiers and you really—you're on their side. You want them to be safe. I mean, you would like them to prevail. The problem is they have been put to a proposition where they can do nothing but fail. So, what do you do? You're on their side. You wanna support them and, yet, they by their own admission more often than not realize they're in an absurdist, preposterous, hopeless situation.
So, do you just spin it and agree with the government? Or do you say, listen, I've been there, what I see leads me to believe—disagree if you like—this is hopeless? That's, I think, the situation the press now finds itself in.
They try to walk the line. They know that if they just come up with bad news, they're gonna be pillared. They know their news outlets will be criticized. Advertisers will abandon. And there is—is a very strong tendency to try to be fair even when the overwhelming preponderance of evidence says this is a mess that cannot be won.
And it doesn't agree with what the government says. And so people say, "They're prejudiced." But, I think that does not bespeak of a—of—of a—any appreciation of how things can be corrected. They can only be corrected when people dare say what they see even though they may be wrong. But, they may be right and that's the job of reporters.
BRANCACCIO: Can our democracy flourish given this state of affairs as you see it?
SCHELL: I think our democracy is not flourishing because there is a food chain that goes from information, which we, as reporters, help provide. From information, you go to discussion, you may go to lawsuit, you may go to hearings, you may go to—legislation. Then, you go to action and then you hopefully go to correction. This food chain is broken.
If the information is not coming in at the bottom, the whole presumption of the decision making system of democracy breaks down. And if you have citizens who are incapable of making intelligent decisions either because they don't listen, they don't read or they don't wanna accept the results of scientists, of journalists, of historians, whomever—well, of course, they're gonna make mistakes and they're gonna elect people who lead us into—situations that will lead to the downfall of the nation.
BRANCACCIO: That's a lot at stake there, Orville.
SCHELL: Well, I lived low these six decades and—I think that we've arrived at a time that if you were truly patriotic, you say what you think. Always with a margin of error.
BRANCACCIO: Orville Schell, thank you very much.
SCHELL: Pleasure.
BRANCACCIO: And that's it for NOW. From Aspen, Colorado, I'm David Brancaccio. We'll see you next week.
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