As news broke last week that President Bush was returning from a historical Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops in Baghdad, Philip Taubman, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, was furious.
In preparation for the trip, the Bush administration assembled a limited reporter pool to accompany the president. To represent the wire services, they invited reporters from the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and Reuters. For television news feeds, they invited a television correspondent and camera crew from Fox News. Several still photographers from these and other news outlets were also invited. But to represent newspapers, the administration passed over the Times’ Taubman and chose instead a reporter from the Washington Post.
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,” wrote Congreve, “Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” Granted, there is no love lost between the Bush administration and the major-leaguers at the New York Times, but the scorned Gray Lady was furious … and she let Bush know it. It was Bush-whacking time: The front page whacked the president for not attending the funerals of fallen soldiers and Taubman whacked the White House for its “deliberate deception” in connection with securing a safe journey for all involved (“Amid Tight Secrecy, a Tip: Bush Is Going to Baghdad”).
In “On Secret Iraq Trip, Bush Pays Holiday Visit to G.I.’s” (Nov. 28, 2003), the Times informed its readers on its front page:
The trip … came at a time when the president is under sharp criticism about the attacks on American troops in Iraq and for his absence from the funerals of American soldiers killed in the conflict.
No one in the article is quoted as having criticized the president for either the “attacks on American troops in Iraq” or “his absence from the funerals of American soldiers killed.” In another article, appearing the same day (“Democrats Temper Praise For Bush Visit With Criticism”), the Times repeated the charge:
The trip came at a time of rising criticism of the president for not attending the funerals of the returning war dead.
Again, no one in the article is quoted as having criticized the president for not attending funerals.
Oh, but there was criticism, to be sure. In an editorial published on Nov. 23, 2003, the Times specifically criticized the president for not having “attended the funerals of the fallen soldiers” in Iraq. Never mind that it is rare for U.S. presidents to attend funerals of soldiers (see “Have Presidents in the Past Attended the Funerals of Dead Soldiers?,” History News Network, Nov. 10, 2003).
So, first they write an editorial criticizing the president for not attending funerals and then they repeat in one “straight” news article after another that the president has come under sharp criticism for not attending funerals. At least, by first voicing the criticism on its own editorial page, the Times can’t be accused of lying in its news pages about the existence of the criticism!
It was a classic technique – employed to perfection – but far more interesting was the reaction of Philip Taubman, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, to being left out of what the Times called “one of the most secretive presidential trips in American history.”
Enveloped in measures of intense security, the trip was not announced to the world until President Bush had already left Baghdad. It was a triumph of historical proportions – the White House had pulled off the impossible (sweetened by the way it happened to overshadow a trip to the region by Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose story was relegated to page 15).
After giving thanks to the troops for their heroic efforts in Iraq, President Bush would have been remiss if he did not turn to give his thanks to the journalists who accompanied him. This small group of professional reporters demonstrated journalism at its best, and for that they earned the gratitude of a president, his soldiers at war, and a nation.
Yet the Times’ Taubman was angry at how the White House pulled off the trip. While a 6-year-old child would understand the White House’s need to employ an innocent ruse to ensure the safety of the president, the reporters and the soldiers on the ground, Taubman told Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz that once White House officials “decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable.” (In addition, Taubman just couldn’t seem to understand why “in this day and age” the White House was unable “to take more reporters” on the journey).
To Taubman’s defense came Tom Rosenstiel, director of the so-called Project for Excellence in Journalism. A misnomer by any standard, the “Project for Excellence in Journalism” is the very same outfit that produced the preposterous book, “The Elements of Journalism” co-written by Mr. Rosenstiel and Bill Kovich (a former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times). One of the key insights of this disaster in journalism is (I’m not making this up):
It is worth restating the point to make it clear. Being impartial or neutral is not a core principle of journalism.
For decades, journalists had been under the impression that impartiality was an essential element of accuracy. To Tom Rosenstiel, impartiality is not a core principle of journalism. I mention this so you understand where this guy is coming from.
Naturally, Rosenstiel took hold of Kurtz’s crying towel to express his dismay and outrage at the reporters who made the trip without revealing the secret. “That’s just not kosher,” he said. “Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can’t decide it’s OK to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause.”
Huh? Since time immemorial, reporters have kept troop movements in confidence – an undisputed principle of journalistic ethics. Does not the movement of the chief “troop” – the commander in chief – deserve the same confidence of the press? Somehow though, to Mr. Rosenstiel, the reporters who accompanied the president breached all journalistic propriety by keeping news of the commander in chief’s movements into a war zone quiet for 24 hours.
The president has been praised for his courage in making such a dangerous trip. It was a trip which had a greater chance of being disrupted by the American press than it did by the Iraqi insurgents. (That is to say that journalists like Taubman and Rosenstiel, by their own admission, are as about as trustworthy as the Iraqis we’re fighting). Thus, the real courage that President Bush displayed was in his willingness to trust the press. At the same time, the reporters who accompanied him are to be commended for being worthy of that trust.
Rather than chastising these reporters for not telling the truth, Tom Rosenstiel should be praising them for their “excellence in journalism.” How can someone with so many years in journalism get it so backward? Many say that liberals are simply blinded by their hatred for George W. Bush. I have no particular insight into how or why these people think the way they do. But one thing is certain: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned. Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
