When the smoke clears from the Bush Era, historians will be perplexed by many things. The performance of the American press may be the most perplexing. Historians are trained to think of journalism as the "first draft of history," which is why they spend so much time poring over microfilm copies and viewing grainy newsreels.
What called this to mind was Scott Pelley's egregious "interview" with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes. Throughout the "interview," Pelley broke every rule of broadcast journalism. He shouted over his guest, he did most of the talking, he presumed to speak for "the American people," and he was clearly angry. We never got a chance to see the "madman" Ahmadinejad. Next to Pelley, in fact, he seemed like a perfect gentleman.
As my friend Nick said, "If I had been Ahmadinejad, I would have said, very early on, 'Mr. Pelley, this interview is over. I came here to answer questions posed by you and CBS News. I did not come here to negotiate Iranian policy with a TV reporter.' And I would have stood up and walked off."
Pelley's technique was straight from the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney playbook. Too straight, in fact. Were I to hazard a guess, 60 Minutes was, after Dan Rather's suit against CBS News last week, out to prove it could Fox-trot to the White House tune, too.
Memo to Pelley and CBS: Mission accomplished.
The behavior of America's "free press" shouldn't be so perplexing to historians. It was ever thus. In fact, no era of press behavior echoes our own better than the previous fin de siecle, the 1890s. That's when the Rupert Murdoch of his day, William Randolph Hearst, willingly became part of the war-making machinery, and boosted his circulation in the process. His brand of saber-rattling was dubbed "yellow journalism."
Hearst wanted a war that would help America define itself as a world power. To promote this agenda, he pushed for war with Spain—in Cuba. In 1895, Cubans revolted against their Spanish colonial rulers. Hearst's correspondent Richard Harding Davis filed story after story about the brave Cuban freedom fighters. Stoked by such dispatches from Hearst's newspapers and a strutting military led by Teddy Roosevelt (Davis's friend, with whose troops he was "embedded"), readers accepted the Hearst spin. Hearst sent artist Frederic Remington to do in pictures what Davis did in words. Remington wired his boss from Cuba: "There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return." Hearst responded, "You furnish pictures. I will furnish war."
And, the CBS of his day, Hearst did. When, in February, 1898, the battleship USS Maine was blown up in Havana harbor (killing 266), Hearst refused to report the distinct possibility that it might have been an accident (the cause has still not been conclusively established). Instead, as historian Philip Knightly wrote, "Hearst, without a particle of proof, attributed it to 'an enemy's secret infernal machine,' and in the wave of patriotic fervor that swept the United States he was able to furnish his correspondents with a war."
Hearst's circulation skyrocketed and other U.S. papers, to compete, got on the saber-rattling bandwagon. The ensuing conflict was called, by Secretary of State John Hay, a "splendid little war," one that allowed the U.S. to annex Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific.
Perhaps, then, we can call the current state of the press "mellow yellow journalism," the go-along-to-get-along pack mentality of a D.C. press corps terrified of losing their contacts and therefore their jobs, and believing that any war is good for business. It's also "yellow" because none of these reporters will be in the front lines, taking bullets for their talking points.
What do you think?
Email editor@valleyadvocate.com.
