Peter Beinart: A Cautionary Tale In Journalism History Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:55:36 -0600 (CST) http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11516 Peter Beinart As Cautionary Tale In Journalism History by David Sirota | Dec 11 2007 - 6:39pm | * David Sirota is a political strategist and NY Times bestselling author whose work appears in major newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and The Colbert Report. He has appeared in TV debates with right-wing icons like Ann Coulter, John Stossel and John Fund. Email: david [at] davidsirota.com. ################ Just eight months ago, PBS's Bill Moyers aired perhaps the single most devastating indictment of the Washington press corps that I have ever seen. In his documentary, which looked at how the media cheered on President Bush's push for a war with Iraq, Moyers interviewed one of the key cheerleaders: then-New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Moyers asked Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart said that though he had never been to Iraq, he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asked what kind of "political journalism" and reporting Beinart did to make sure his pro-war cheerleading was sound? Beinart's answer was the stuff of journalism infamy: "Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying." This is the kind of quote that your journalism professor puts on the board during your freshman year as an example of all that is wrong with the reporting today. And you might think that after such an utterly humiliating admission, Beinart would change his ways, and do, ya know, real reporting the next time he opens his mouth about Iraq. But you would be wrong. In his latest Washington Post column, Beinart claims that "the war has receded" as a priority for Americans. As proof, he cites himself reading a live-blog from a New York Times reporter covering a Democratic presidential debate. I kid you not. Here is Beinart's lead "proving" his assertion that "the war has receded" as a priority: Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion\ bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver's licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night's end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn't typed "Iraq" once. As the Atlantic Monthly's Matt Yglesias says, "Basically, the evidence\ for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate questioning process don't want to talk about the war." In other words, just like he pushed America to war based on "reading the statements and the things that people said" and not actual reporting, he is trying to downplay the Iraq War as a major issue by simply reading the punditry of other Washington reporters, rather than looking at the actual facts. It's no wonder why he has chosen to do this: The actual facts blow his entire thesis about the Iraq war "receding" to smithereens. As Editor & Publisher reports, "a new Gallup poll reveals that when 'asked which issues will be most important in determining their vote for president in next year's election, Americans by a wide margin say the war in Iraq, with more than one in three mentioning the war.'" What's really offensive about Beinart's behavior is as much his\ desperate propagandizing about the war he helped push America into as his disregard for any semblance of intellectual honesty. This is not some casual error here - this is a person who was quite literally embarrassed on national television just a few months ago and is now employing exactly the behavior he originally was embarrassed for - as if journalistic integrity and ethics are just nuisances to be ignored. Most normal people would react to getting factually crushed on television by sitting back and thinking about how to avoid such egregiously irresponsible behavior in the future. Not folks in D.C. like Beinart - it's full-speed ahead for them. Equally appalling (though, frankly, not shocking) is the fact that the Washington Post continues to publish him, and that for all his dishonesty, he has been rewarded with a perch at the Council on Foreign Relations. Apparently in Washington, helping push America into\ the worst foreign relations disaster in contemporary history and then\ continuing to lie about that disaster is a resume builder, rather than a blemish. Yes, you actually get a bigger platform and get paid more\ and get a cushier job in D.C. the more inaccurate and deliberately off\ the mark you are willing to be. The Peter Beinart story is not troubling because this one\ insignificant warmonger continues to live the good life in D.C. It is deeply disturbing for what it says about the sorry state of the media's role as a check and balance on power. The Peter Beinart story\ is, pound-for-pound, the saddest, sickest commentary of all on a\ Washington media culture whose insularity has totally divorced it from even the most basic tenets of journalism. And that's a tragedy for those of us outside of Washington, living in the reality-based community. Vote Result + + + + + + + + + - Score: 9.8, Votes: 6 Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | newsvine | google | yahoo | technorati David Sirota's blog | login or register to post comments | email this blog | 1185 reads Comment viewing options [Threaded list - expanded.] [Date - oldest first] [1000 comments per page] Save settings Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes. Man, I need a new job... "Apparently in Washington, helping push America into the worst foreign relations disaster in contemporary history and then continuing to lie about that disaster is a resume builder, rather than a blemish. Yes, you actually get a bigger platform and get paid more and get a cushier job in D.C. the more inaccurate and deliberately off the mark you are willing to be." At the place I work, if I fuck up bigtime, I have to spend the next ten months getting my production average back up to par if I want to even hope for the company's typical 3-stinking-percent raise, come February (big fucking deal, but it's better than nothing). I need a job where nobody gives a flying fuck if you're right or not. Where do I apply?? _______ "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire Qford | Dec 11 2007 - 8:05pm | login or register to post comments | email this comment You can't. You can't get a job like that because you are not a neocon and you have an ounce of brains. Haven't you ever noticed that this whole bunch rewards idiocy and punishes anyone who honestly presents anything for what it is. Look at it this way; at least you have a job to get a raise at.... _______ This used to be a pretty good country until Bush & Cheney showed up! ugly_american | Dec 11 2007 - 8:23pm | login or register to post comments | email this comment Great Piece You have displayed just another example of mindless journalism that is rotting this nation from within. The people's right to know the truth is one of the most fundamental elements that allows a democracy to thrive. When the public is misled, this is what causes makes for bad decisions and opens us up to tyranny from a government that distorts the truth. _______ Timothy V. Gatto Timothy Gatto | Dec 11 2007 - 9:47pm | login or register to post comments | email this comment The tools of crisis - recognize them & isolate them to beat them In the context of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, the major, corporate media has been a tool for creating and maintaining an atmosphere of crisis, within which crisis it has been possible to impose and expand diabolical measures that subvert and bypass normal democratic processes. It has happened in country after country as they essentially have stolen those countries from their citizens. We here are now in the process of having America stolen from us, and it is not an accident. Beinart's inclusion in the CFR should simply confirm that "they" have anointed him as one of their own. With The Shock Doctrine, Klein has shown that greed has been the motive force behind using crises to steal countries around the globe for about 40 years now. The goal is clear now: to steal nations from their citizens. The global power players - large, predominantly U.S., corporations - have practiced and tweaked their methodology on smaller countries. Only since 9/11 have they had the opportunity to go for The Big One - the United States itself - though they had laid the groundwork for at least 20 years, since the Reagan years. Part of that groundwork was infusing the major media with people (and I use the term loosely) like Beinart, ones willing to play Wormtongue in order to have access to the court. Beinart is serving his evil masters well, and they have thrown him a bone with a token position on the CFR. It only shows us whom he serves. It is not We The People, just as it is not journalistic principle. It also shows what kind of journalists have been graduating in recent decades - certainly no Edward R. Murrowses. Shame on the profession. They have gone the way of lawyers and politicians. Now that we know whose side Beinart is on, we can ignore him, except to point to him and call him the lackey he is. And to add him to our sh*t list. In the big picture, though, we need to take stock of his kind as we begin to formulate the defense of the country of We The People, now that Ms Klein has shown us the continuity and consistency of their efforts, the construct behind the apparent incompetences and apparent slips of integrity. These are not - repeat NOT - simply random acts or statements or reports by people acting within normal human parameters. They are designed to change our country's very structure. From signing statements to the unitary Presidency, from the outing of Velerie Plame to the anthrax scares of late 2001, from the failures that allowed the attacks 9/11 to the grab for Iraqi oil, from the NSA wiretaps to TSA fingerprints, from no-fly lists to torture, from unverifiable election results to having a doofus in the White House, from the horrendous conditions at military hospitals to the tacit approval of the decline of the dollar, from the Patriot Act to the denial of due process in Guantanamo, from the loss of 2700 people on 9/11 to the loss of 3800 U.S. soldiers in an illegal war - all these and many more are ways they are stealing the greatness out of America. And it is all for a purpose: The very wealthy, the oligarchs, want not just 98 or 99% of the wealth of the world - they want the rest, too, and are not going to be bashful about grabbing it. It is none of it accidental or random or incompetence. The Beinarts of the media are part of the stealing of our country by the oligarchs. Oligarchs historically have little power to act, not without their minions. Beinart is only one of their minions. We need to identify them all, all the minions, in the coming months and years, and we need to take sides and stand firm against accepting their contributions to our demise. Without the Beinarts, the oligarchs have to start getting their own hands dirty. We The People don't outnumber the oligarchs, in most of the ways that currently matter. We have to start finding ways to change the equation. We have to prevent Plantation America, before we all get turned into field slaves and house slaves. We are much closer to being a third world country than most of us realize. To change the equation, we have to swallow our monumental American pride and start looking to other countries and to see how they have begun to throw off the oligarchs. If we choose to puff out our chests and, like 3-year-olds, squawk that we "can do it ourselves", we will have a much longer road toward regaining our country. We seriously have to look to those who have been under the gun for decades. Some countries are winning the war. We have to do everything they have learned to do, and we have to do it soon. We can't let the Beinarts of the world or their masters win. TravelerDiogenes | Dec 11 2007 - 10:03pm | login or register to post comments | email this comment Perhaps, but... The very wealthy, the oligarchs, want not just 98 or 99% of the wealth of the world - they want the rest, too If they really want that, they're complete idiots. Short of enslaving every last person on the planet, it's simply not possible. And how is that going to work anyway, when you have a few thousand trying to control six or seven billion? They'd have to share some of it with millions (if not hundreds of millions) of enforcers, at least. Not to mention, all that money might not be useful for much of anything anymore if they did that. I mean, they can buy off all the old relics, but then what? With mere slave labor? Build a new set of pyramids? No, what they probably want is to increase the amount of wealth that exists, just so they can personally have more, regardless of what their actual share of it is. That means more people or finding ways to get more work out of each person, preferably both. The problem (for them) is that it probably isn't going to happen for much longer. Perhaps if they started building fusion power plants and sending people off to colonize Mars within the next couple of decades, maybe. Otherwise, energy and environmental constraints will likely halt or even reverse both population growth and work capacity. sdrawkcaB | Dec 12 2007 - 3:59am | login or register to post comments | email this comment The tools of crisis - recognize them & isolate them to beat them Duplicate post deleted. TravelerDiogenes | Dec 11 2007 - 10:02pm | login or register to post comments | email this comment Something, but not enough At least we have Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart. But they're just two drops in a very large bucket. jnathan | Dec 12 2007 - 6:22am | login or register to post comments | email this comment Navigation * home * recent popular content * news aggregator User login Username: * _______________ Password: * _______________ Log in * Create new account * Request new password Premium Advertisements Advertisements [advertise_liberally.gif] Smirking Chimp on your PDA Use this link to add The Smirking Chimp Mobile Edition to your Avant Go channels. Or, point your hand-held device to this link. 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