Journalists shouldn’t be pushovers

Last Monday, an overflow crowd poured into UC Irvine’s Crystal Cove

Auditorium to attend a forum sponsored by the School of Social

Sciences as part of its series on American Foreign Policy.

The topic of the day was “Bush Foreign Policy and the Role of the

Media in the Formation of Public Opinion.” The panel members were all

writers for “The Nation,” which is the only mainstream leftist

magazine (that is not an oxymoron) remaining in the allegedly liberal

American press.

The enthusiastic audience represented -- as one of the speakers

said only partly in jest -- “a clearly liberal bias that would

probably leave the picture pretty bleak outside this room.”

I came for two reasons in particular -- because I don’t hear much

of this kind of talk at City Council meetings and because I’m pretty

disenchanted with the current performance of my associates in

journalism, and I wanted to find out if this high-octane panel shared

that view.

I’ve flagellated myself for the last month by watching Defense

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lecture and finger point and avoid answers

except to his own questions and tell what seems to be a highly

professional group of reporters how to do their jobs while they sit

passively and take it. And I keep thinking back through five decades

of working similar territory and wondering how some of the models I

looked up to during those years, such as Harrison Salisbury of the

New York Times and Edward R. Murrow of CBS, would have done their job

in that situation.

I think I know. I was once in Detroit doing a magazine profile of

Henry Ford III when I was told that a scheduled lunch interview would

have to be put off until later in the afternoon because U.S. Vice

President Richard Nixon would be arriving from Washington for an

urgent meeting with Ford.

So I was hanging out near the executive dining area when Nixon and

his entourage arrived, followed by the press corps that traveled with

him. Salisbury was one of those reporters. The dining area was

cleared, and Nixon and Ford, with their aides, entered and shut the

door behind them.

Salisbury would have none of that. When he rattled the knob and

found the door locked, he pounded on it until security appeared. He

explained that Nixon was about the public’s business, and it was the

business of the press to report it. Negotiations followed, and

Salisbury persisted until a pool reporter was admitted. How very much

I would like to have seen him go up against Rumsfeld.

Same thing with Murrow. While the whole Washington establishment

was running scared from the reckless and random accusations of Sen.

Joseph McCarthy, Murrow took him on and provided a firm beachhead for

the counterattack that finally broke McCarthy’s stranglehold on the

throat of America.

So where are the Murrows and Salisburys today when we so badly

need them?

The panel members I hoped might deal with this question were

Arianna Huffington, Jonathan Schell and Eric Alterman. All have

distinguished credits and were hawking new books. They were literate,

acerbic, frequently funny and supported their points with facts and

reason. All have rattled a few doorknobs of their own, and intend to

keep at it, which I found heartening. Less heartening were the

reasons they set forth for the virtual disappearance of an effective

opposition.

Three reasons, all supported by multiple specific examples, were

cited most frequently by the panel:

First, the concentration of political power in the White House,

supported by the military and accompanied by the parallel erosion of

power in Congress.

Second, what Schell called “the collapse of the Democratic party

to perform its role as the loyal opposition that leaves the media

virtually standing alone against the power of the White House.”

And, third, the failure of the media to do follow-up stories on

the plethora of misinformation used to support the policies of the

Bush Administration.

They might have added the steady buildup of fear. I wonder how

many of the people who obediently heeded the call for smallpox shots

are feeling pretty foolish now?

There was much more, but this will suggest the tone and flavor of

the discussion. The panel members will continue to publish their

books and write their columns in a literate magazine and on the op-ed

pages of our newspapers read by a tiny fraction of our citizens while

the White House and military dominate the front pages and the talk

shows seen and heard by millions.

This was a matter of deep concern to the panelists.

Schell said that “if the opposition is to be heard in this

leadership vacuum, we must build a movement that will get attention

from the Democrats.”

Alterman added, “When we have constructed a system like a

beautiful Rolls Royce, we should get in and drive it.”

I left the UCI campus with a good many mixed feelings. Two

essential parts of the Rolls Royce constructed by the founders of

this country were the division of powers in which Congress, alone,

could declare a war, and the protection of minorities and dissent

that guaranteed responsible opposition to the party in power. A free

press can’t fill an opposition leadership vacuum; it can only fully

and fairly report the activities and views of the opposition while

refusing to allow lies or misinformation from any source to go

unchallenged.

But, that said, a free press could certainly fire up the process.

And I’d feel a lot more hopeful if Ed Murrow was still around to make

sure the fire stayed lit.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.