Brill, Mote, and Beam
If Steven Brill's object is
to make the media look absurd, he got off to a roaring start. On the front page
of the New York Times last Sunday was a story that said the first issue
of Brill's Content would report that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr
had leaked information about his investigation to the press--including the
Times . Now if the question of whether Starr leaks to the Times is
important enough for the front page, you might wonder why the Times
needed Brill to raise the subject. And who knows better than the Times
whether Starr leaked to the Times ? Yet the Times cites Brill and
then cites its own Washington editor, Michael Oreskes, saying the Times
does not discuss its sources. And all this contortion was induced by Brill's
having leaked his own forthcoming article to the Times .
But if
Brill's goal is to offer a socially useful critique of media misbehavior, he is
doing less well. There are two problems with Brill's Content . The first
is that though the editor seems to envision a magazine that will hold the press
accountable to a wider public, he has created one that is unlikely to interest
anyone outside the media. The second problem is that though Brill deserves a
Pulitzer for self-righteousness, he simply isn't a careful enough journalist
himself to be criticizing others.
Let's start with the magazine. After hearing it disputed
for so many days, potential readers will be fooled into thinking something
scintillating is going on. In fact, what will strike most people when they
finally get their hands on Brill's Content is how boring it is. Dullness
is a problem for media magazines in general, the prototype being the ever
worthy, always soporific Columbia Journalism Review . CJR is
filled with articles you'd say only people in the business could possibly want
to read, except that they're too mundane even for people in the business. "New
Guild contract at the Milwaukee Sentinel " is the sort of thing
CJR does. You will find praise for that five-part series on
Pennsylvania's neglected infrastructure, and a spank for local TV news
directors who can't seem to put anything but crime on the air.
Brill is hoping for an
audience beyond the industry, but most of his magazine--the first issue,
anyhow--amounts to little more than CJR on steroids. There's a long
feature lauding the New York Times for its fine reporting on
mismanagement at the Columbia/HCA health care conglomerate, and another rapping
60 Minutes for a flawed story--aired 10 years ago--on alleged
spontaneous acceleration in Audis. There's a "Heroes" column about the reporter
at Chicago magazine who exposed the Beardstown Ladies for inflating the
returns of their investment club. Seems he had to go in for sinus surgery the
day the Wall Street Journal picked up his scoop. Crazy ... If I were a
better person, perhaps I would read stories like this through to the end.
What is pernicious is Brill's
attitude that he's the only guy in the world with the guts to point out other
people's mistakes. His maximum opus on the first three weeks of Monica Lewinsky
scandal coverage is intended to be a devastating case study of media
malpractice. This 24,000 word story charges reporters with just about every sin
in the book, and commits most of them itself. Here are 10 journalistic no-nos
that stand out in Brill's piece:
1)
Overhyping to the Point of Dishonesty
Brill
contends the press has allowed itself to be used by Starr to make Clinton look
guilty. But to prove that Starr has leaked grand jury information to the
media--which, by the way, Brill doesn't do--is not to demonstrate that
journalists have been irresponsible. By my reading, Brill does not document a
single error of fact made in the national publications he analyzes--the New
York Times , the Washington Post , Time , and
Newsweek --and he presents only a few cases in which any of them even
misplayed a story in a significant way. He ignores the tough coverage Starr has
received. To conclude, as Brill does, that the press is now "an institution
being corrupted to its core" wildly overreaches the evidence he presents.
2)
Misquotation
Susan
Schmidt, a Washington Post reporter, claims she did not tell Brill that
she "heard from Starr's office something about Vernon Jordan and coaching a
witness." The quote is damaging because it implies Schmidt revealed the
identity of an anonymous source. For another example from a nonjournalist who
claims plausibly to have been misquoted by Brill, see "Chatterbox." We cannot know for sure who is right, because Brill
did not tape-record his interviews.
3)
Self-Contradiction
Later in
the piece, Brill writes that Schmidt and another reporter "declined all comment
on their sources." Well, did she or didn't she?
4)
Distortion
Brill
accuses Newsweek of suppressing critical exculpatory information about
Clinton in its initial story published online. He cites a passage in the Linda
Tripp tapes in which Tripp asks Lewinsky if the president knows she is going to
lie in her upcoming deposition in the Paula Jones case. Lewinsky answers "No."
Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter whom Brill criticizes, notes,
first, that the full exchange is equivocal--Lewinsky also tells Tripp the
president doesn't think she is going to tell the truth. Second, the
Newsweek online story stated that the tapes offer "no clear evidence" to
support or undermine Tripp's allegations. And third, in the issue it published
the following Monday, Newsweek included the full excerpt--which is where
Brill found the out-of-context quote he claims Newsweek ignored.
5)
Neglecting Contradictory Evidence
In
building his case that much of the information could have come only from Starr,
Brill ignores a highly plausible alternative explanation: Most if not all could
have come from the lawyers of various witnesses sympathetic to the president.
Lawyers for the Clintons, Betty Currie, White House steward Bayani Nelvis, and
others are operating under what is called a "joint defense agreement." They
pool data about what their clients have told Starr's grand jury. This means
there are lots of lawyers with access to information about what various
witnesses said and a variety of motivations to leak that information. Noting
this possibility isn't just a matter of fairness--it's an issue of basic
intellectual honesty.
6) Giving
Only One Side of an Argument
Brill
asserts that leaks from Starr's office were obviously illegal. "There are court
decisions," he writes, "that have ruled explicitly that leaking information
about prospective witnesses who might testify at a grand jury, or about
expected testimony, or about negotiations regarding immunity for testimony, or
[about] the strategy of a grand jury proceeding all fall within the criminal
prohibition." Nowhere does he note court decisions that have ruled the
opposite, or acknowledge that the question is far from settled.
7)
Faking Scoops
Almost
all the criticism of the press in Brill's piece is familiar, much of it to the
point of cliché. Items about "witnesses" retracted by the Dallas Morning
News and the Wall Street Journal Web edition have been endlessly
hashed over. So have various nuances that Brill presents as revelatory. Both
the Washington Post and
Slate
, for instance, have reported
that the source for the erroneous Dallas Morning News item about a
Secret Service witness was Joseph DiGenova. Brill reinvents the wheel in this
way numerous times. And while we're at it, is it really a revelation that Starr
talks to reporters? At televised press conferences he has held in Little Rock,
he can be seen calling on journalists by their first names, suggesting that he
knows some of them pretty well and that he doesn't regard this as a secret.
8)
Sabotage Through Blind Quotes
Defending
the New York Times story on Currie, "one Times reporter" is
quoted by Brill as saying that "this was not some Sue Schmidt jam job." Schmidt
is the reporter covering the Whitewater-Lewinsky beat for the Washington
Post . To allow her competitors to snipe at her under cover of anonymity
seems exactly the sort of thing Brill started his magazine to nail other
journalists for doing. And what's a "jam job," anyway?
9)
Conflict of Interest
Howard Kurtz reports in the
Washington Post this week that Brill and his wife donated $2,000 to the
Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996. Most publications forbid journalists from making
campaign contributions, certainly to people they're writing about. But whether
or not Brill thinks such a prohibition makes sense--I look forward to 20,000
words on the topic in a future issue of Brill's Content --he should have
disclosed this fact, as he acknowledged when busted.
Don't get
me wrong. Reporters, especially TV reporters, have been far from blameless in
Flytrap. In the heat of competition, stories have run that shouldn't have. But
the best reporters covering the scandal have done an extremely good job in a
vexing and unfamiliar situation. At times, they have behaved almost heroically.
When first offered a chance to listen to the Tripp tapes, Isikoff refused,
passing up what might have been the scoop of the decade out of concern that
doing so would put him in an ethically compromised situation. Brill disparages
these compunctions, noting that Isikoff had to run off to "CNBC, where he was a
paid Clinton sex scandal pundit." Actually, Isikoff notes, it was MSNBC, where
he was under contract to discuss the campaign finance scandal. That makes
10) Errors of Fact . But more to the point, is there anybody who thinks
that Steve Brill, back before he was a press scold, would have passed up the
chance to hear those tapes?
Steven Brill .
If you
missed the link to Slate 's Chatterbox, where a nonjournalist claims he
was misquoted by Brill in the "Pressgate" piece, click here.
