How can a big league news organization like CBS be so dumb? Among the many questions raised by the disclosure that CBS News and Dan Rather were conned into accepting and using forged documents about President Bush’s National Guard Service, this one is central.
Note, though, that CBS News isn't alone in the race for the gullibility prize. The network has simply become a companion in chagrin to other major news organizations like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today. In recent years, all of these have been notoriously snookered by staffers peddling concocted stories.
How come?
Columnist Richard Cohen, writing in the Post, offered a simple explanation. At the root of these embarrassments, he maintains, is the “hunger for — and dedication to — news” on the part of the media.
Well, yes. Hungry for news they are. And hungry journalists, like hungry people generally, can and do make mistakes. But Cohen is being more than a tad too easy on his fellow journalists. After several decades of working with news people (as information director of two large national Catholic organizations) and working as a journalist myself, I see other causes also at work.
Four, to be exact. Call them the helluva-story syndrome, media bias, arrogance, and the circle-the-wagons mentality.
Start with the helluva-story syndrome. In the world of journalists, some stories just look so good that the temptation becomes overwhelming to want them to be true. This is very dangerous. When journalists want something to be true badly enough, it's a short step to believing that the story is true even when it's not.
This helluva-story syndrome dovetails neatly with media bias. Journalists routinely deny its existence. Believe me, folks, even though journalists rise above it much of the time, media bias exists. It's not unreasonable to think it was at work in the CBS News-forged documents fiasco.
Sure, CBS and Dan Rather and the rest would have had no qualms at all about reporting a story that embarrassed a Democratic president. Ask Bill Clinton about that. But it's hard not to think they found a special schadenfreude in imagining they had a Republican incumbent in their sights. Bias, too, is very dangerous for journalists.
Journalistic arrogance is easy to recognize once you've encountered it. For instance, try getting a news organization or a journalist to admit a mistake. Yes, sometimes they do — but even then it's like pulling teeth. And the first line of defense against charges of error is precisely the arrogant attitude, “We can't be wrong, because we're smarter than everybody else.”
In a way, I sympathize. Journalists have to take a great deal of heat from the rednecks and cranks who populate the world in such generous numbers. Journalistic arrogance is a kind of self-defense. As a universal response to criticism, nevertheless, it also is exceedingly dangerous. Recognition of one's fallibility is an indispensable part of the prudent journalist's equipment.
Finally, there is the circle-the-wagons mentality. It, too, is a response to criticism. Journalists are highly competitive people, but they instinctively side with one another against external attack. This is solidarity carried to the point of excess.
Many people are pleased to see CBS News and Dan Rather getting their come-uppance now. Many always are happy when the media get egg on their faces. It's an understandable reaction. And it isn't healthy. The ongoing erosion of public trust in journalism and journalists in American society today is a deeply troubling trend whose causes cry out to be identified and remedied.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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