When the Watchdog

Goes To Sleep

Journalists for the major news media have a responsibility -- one that they sometimes don't live up to.

Fact is, some people don't want them to -- they would prefer that journalists look the other way and not bring certain things to light -- illegal, immoral or questionable things. 

Throughout history, political, legal and economic pressures have been applied -- often successfully -- to keep journalists from exposing wrongdoing.

Although such pressures are commonplace in autocratic societies such as North Korea, China and Iran where news people end up in jail or worse for simply telling the truth, we assume that such things are rare in the United States.

Unfortunately, this is not true.

What follows are three examples.  These do not involve stock scandals and religious molestation crimes that have ruined lives, as bad as these things have been. The implications of these stories go beyond even these.  Years later the full extent of the deceptions involved remain controversial and confused.

The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers were top-secret documents detailing the decisions and policies behind the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1965-1973).

During the Vietnam War between three and four million Vietnamese on both sides were killed, and more than 58,000 Americans lost their lives. All of their names are engraved in the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. (See photo.) For years this war saturated each night's TV news.

The Pentagon Papers brought to light the political and military thinking behind the war  --  including some decisions and justifications that in retrospect are questionable.

The government knew that bringing this information to light would undermine the public's confidence in their government  --  and, as it turned out, they were right.

Before the war was over, a large percentage of Americans at home and serving in Vietnam had turned against the war.  An estimated 250 underground antiwar newspapers were published by active-duty soldiers and distributed in coffeehouses.  

But out of a fear of alienating viewers and readers the mainstream media did not want to openly question the war effort -- although many things had emerged that should have been reported.

Opposition to the war started on college campuses and was fostered by campus newspapers. Since the general public was originally behind the war, a major "generational rift" resulted with many young people being arrested and even in one case killed for protesting the war. Since they were engaging in legal, free speech demonstrations, most were released from jail within a short time, but the government's point had been made.

However, as questions about the war continued to surface and as the toll of dead and wounded mounted, antiwar sentiments finally spread to a significant percentage of the U.S. population.

The U.S. news media, which originally had an almost unquestioned allegiance to the war effort, started reporting the major differences in what they were being told by the Administration and what they were finding out on their own.

The American public discovered that more accurate information was often being reported by the foreign media.

Feeling that the public had a right to know what went on behind the scenes of the war, The New York Times announced that they were going to publish the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, who helped write this exhaustive, top-secret study for the government, had tried to get the report to the Times. His efforts to get these papers to the New York Times, and the government's efforts to find and stop him, represented a vicious cat and mouse game for many weeks.

Ellsberg was finally able to get the papers to a reporter, but he was subsequently arrested for treason, which could have carried the death penalty.

Fortunately for him, the government had resorted to illegal and highly questionable activities to catch him, and when this came out during the trial, the judge threw out the charges.

Even so, the Nixon administration moved to block their publication and successfully won temporary injunctions against the New York Times, and later, the Washington Post, which by this time had also planned to publish the papers.

But, on June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that stopping publication amounted to “prior restraint,” which violated free speech protection.

Both the New York Times and The Washington Post then published Pentagon Papers. While this was a victory for freedom of the press, the revelations undermined the public's confidence in the government and leadership.

Years later, even the major architect of the Vietnam war, the late Robert McNamara, who had been Defense Secretary, spent his later years publicly disavowing his decisions on the war as, "wrong, terribly wrong."

But, another major jolt was on the horizon.

The Watergate Scandal

Having learned from the Vietnam experience, the press now questioned the credibility of government briefings and press releases.

In 1973, two reporters for the Washington Post faced down major threats and engaged in some tenacious investigative journalism to bring to light the corrupt dealings of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

The story of the Watergate Scandal and reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is documented in the Academy Award-winning film, All the President's Men, from which this photo was taken.

The film, which documents what led up to the resignation of the only president in U.S. history, is worth renting from you local video store for both its educational and dramatic values. 

While the impressive investigative journalism behind this story further bolstered the credibility of newspapers (not to mention inspiring a generation of investigative journalists), it further undermined public confidence in government.

The general mistrust between the government and the press that emerged during these times continued until the 9/11 terrorist attacks in United States in 2001.

Patriotism and the Press

For at least two years following the terrorist attacks on the East Coast of the United States, patriotism soared.  The public and the press was highly supportive of the administration.

Later, the press would be criticized for not questioning the central justification for launching the Iraq war. The Administration at first tied the terrorist attacks to Iraq, and to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Both proved false.

In a rare admission, The New York Times, considered the nation's most influential newspaper, accepted some of the blame. The Times had gone along with a reporter's pro-war reporting -- a reporter who it turned out had a less than objective relationship with the Administration.

But, in the wave of patriotism that followed 9/11, few wanted to be branded "unpatriotic" by questioning the administration.

The public didn't want to hear things that contradicted what they had been led to believe.

By 2006, this had started to change, and with the possible of FOX news, which remained pro-Republican, the major media then started to openly question the Bush administration's decisions on the Iraq war.

It was learned that information on some of the questionable justification for the war had been available, but it had been systematically discredited. Those who had tried to bring it to the public's attention ran into problems with the Bush administration.

The dramatic DVD  Nothing But the Truth is loosely based on events at the time. This docudrama parallels the case of Valerie Plame, whose status as a CIA agent was exposed in the media after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote a New York Times opinion piece charging the Bush administration with manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

This photo of Ms. Plame is from her subsequent book, Fair Game, which tells the story from her perspective.

Knowingly exposing a CIA agent's identity and possibly jeopardizing her life and the lives of associated CIA agents is a federal offense of the highest order. Although the information was passed to the media by officials in the Bush Administration, no one was ever prosecuted for doing it.

Even though her husband, Ambassador Wilson, and a few others had tried to alert the public to the questionable justification for the Iraq war, by that time the public had been led to believe that the war was justified. Because of that the public tended to view contrary views with suspicion.  Right-wing commentators branded it "treasonous." 

 It was only much later that things became clear.

"News Is What I Want

To Believe Is True"

Unfortunately, now more than ever, we live in a politically polarized time when news is largely dictated by what the public prefers to believe.

As this is being written (07/14/2009) the two most viewed news channels, FOX and MSNBC, take strongly (and opposite) partisan views -- each reorienting the news to appease their particular viewers.

Somewhat lost in the race to ratings is elusive (and apparently less popular) element called unbiased truth.

For young journalists wishing to make a career in journalism adopting the techniques of either extreme will undermine their future credibility and their value as professionally objective employees.

-Dr. Ron Whittaker, is a Professor of Broadcasting
and former newspaper reporter and TV news anchor.