BAD
NEWS:
WHERE
THE PRESS GOES WRONG IN THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT
REVIEWED
BY
EVAN CORNOG
Robert
Shogan has been writing about presidential politics for more than
three decades, and this is his eighth book to tackle the subject
either directly or obliquely. Following a short overview of the
relationship between presidents and the press, Bad News
offers capsule summaries of the presidential campaigns Shogan
has covered through last year's race and the Florida aftermath.
The book concludes with a prescription for fixing what is wrong
with our current way of running -- and reporting on -- presidential
campaigns.
The
book's strengths come from Shogan's long experience and his close
observation of the electoral process. Having watched the development
of political spin, Shogan criticizes its rise with mordant observations.
He is acutely aware of the dangers of being sucked into the orbit
of the White House, and of the power of candidates' flattery.
He recounts, for example, an effort by Jimmy Carter to solicit
advice from reporters on how he could improve his performance
in the 1976 campaign, and he rebukes himself as "unprofessional"
in succumbing to the temptation to offer George W. Bush advice
on debating during Bush's campaign for re-election as governor
of Texas.
Shogan's
recountings of recent presidential contests are solid, and in
each chapter, he points to situations where the press in his view
failed to do its job. His catalog of shortcomings is hardly novel
-- the press should have looked into the Watergate burglary more
aggressively during the 1972 race; Gerald Ford's blunder in denying
that there was Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was overplayed;
the press should not let campaigns define expectations for primary-election
outcomes -- and does not advance the discussion much.
At
times, he criticizes the press for not understanding events as
clearly as they would be understood in later years. But this is,
after all, the price journalism pays for immediacy. Journalists
like to think that they are writing the first draft of history,
and in a way they are. But historians come to the task with greater
access to the papers and reminiscences of those in power, and
with the incalculable benefit of hindsight. If anything, Shogan's
critique of himself and his fellow reporters is too harsh -- they
are doing a hard job under difficult conditions, and can scarcely
be expected to perceive in 1968, say, the transformation of American
electoral politics that came with that year's presidential race
and the end of the New Deal electoral alliance.
Shogan's
perspective remains very much that of the insider -- inside the
campaign planes, inside the White House, and inside the major
news organizations. Shogan certainly presents thoughtful criticisms
of the world he inhabits, but he does not take them very far.
He laments the low voter turnout in America, but does not ask
how (or whether) those non-voters get their news. He mentions
the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the pressure to be first with
a story (and does a good job of discussing this with regard to
Election Night of 2000) but does not venture any serious criticism
of the existing corporate structures of American journalism.
There
is, in short, not a great deal of distance between the author
and his subject. While this is often an advantage, because it
allows the reader to benefit from Shogan's unusual degree of closeness
to the events the book covers, it ultimately limits the book's
value. His prescriptions for better coverage -- reporters should
explore presidential "character" in a proper context, explain
the value and limits of polling data, and refrain from trying
to predict the future -- are reasonable but hardly daring. For
all the boldness of the book's title and subtitle, the impression
the reader takes away is that reporters are doing the best they
can under the circumstances. A stronger analysis of those circumstances
would have made for a stronger book. *
Evan
Cornog is associate dean at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism
and the co-author of Hats in the Ring: An Illustrated
History of American Presidential Campaigns.
