What The Times Was Up To
- 04.20.2008 - 9:56 PMMax Boot’s post earlier today about the preposterous New York Times story on the relationship between the Pentagon and former-military men-turned-war-pundits was spot on. I think, based on many years of experience working at various newspapers, that there is an explanation for the extreme length — 7800 words — of the story and the fact that it manages to find nothing more than an effort by the Pentagon to get good coverage. The Times thought it was on to something very big, ended up with something very small, and then took what little they had and tried to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear that was reporter David Barstow’s investigation.
I intuit that this story, which features extensive use of Freedom of Information requests, was originally conceived as an investigation of potentially criminal activity — specifically, whether the Pentagon bribed these men to say things and write things both the Pentagon and the pundits themselves knew to be false. If there were such payments, it would be a requirement in law that the payments would be made on the basis of contracts — like the contracts that Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, two conservative pundits, received from the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services respectively to promote legislation.
In the end, however, The story reads like a work of investigative journalism that came up entirely dry. Perhaps Barstow was tipped off to something seriously rotten and saw a Pulitzer dangling before him if he could only get chapter and verse. Perhaps someone else at the Times was, and threw the assignment to Barstow. Whatever is the case, there proved to be no there there, and Barstow was left with a huge amount of information with no clear act of wrongdoing.
So he did what is called a “notebook dump,” with the approval and even encouragement of his editors, revealing every single bit of information he uncovered. What began as a possible major scoop ended up as a “thumbsucker,” one of those “this is a cautionary tale about the way the Bush administration tried to spin the public.” Barstow’s endless tale reveals nothing more than that the Pentagon treated former military personnel like VIPs, courted them and served them extremely well, in hopes of getting the kind of coverage that would counteract the nastier stuff written about the Defense Department in the media. The fact that they were treated no better, if I have my guess right, than Thomas Friedman is treated any time his assistant places a phone call informing the pooh-bahs of Washington that the Great Man is deigning to give them an audience goes unremarked.
The honest thing to do in these circumstances is to kill the piece because you didn’t get the goods. That’s the problem with investigative journalism — often, the scandal is too confusing to be described in an exciting way, or it isn’t a scandal at all. But newspapers never kill the piece, because they spent too much money, too much time, and had too much hope to say, “You know what? This just didn’t pan out.”
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April 20th, 2008 at 10:57 PM
The Times is the perfect newspaper for this brave new Obamian world we live in:
it can say absolutely nothing better than any other rag in print.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:05 PM
Um, J-Pod, don’t you qualify as one of those blogger mouthpieces we read about in the Times article? It’s no wonder you are working hard and fast to make this one a “non-issue”. The fact that our government has gone this far and this deep to pump up their illegally sought war IS INDEED criminal, and all the players shall have to face the consequences as they come down the pike. Perhaps not in this life, but you will face music.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:12 PM
Kimberly received her talking points.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:15 PM
You just stick with that Kimberly.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:18 PM
Lou,
Kimberly probably has an implant rather than mere blue-tooth to receive her instructions…
April 20th, 2008 at 11:29 PM
Kimberly,
First, you say “…IS INDEED criminal….”
If the Times itself–which did the long winded story looking for criminality–could not deliver, do you think you yelling in ALL CAPS will make it so? Please state the human law broken.
Secondly, you state confidently that “all the players shall have to face the consequences…perhaps not in this life….”
Does that mean you believe in God, an afterlife and superhuman law? Please expand on this.
Theology is interesting. I’m especially interested in your views on eternal judgment and justice. What laws will these “players” face in the afterlife? Do you have substantive authority to make such a condemnation and dire warning? Please describe the Judge they will face and the punishment they will endure.
Though I disagree with your attacks on anyone attempting to counter the MSM’s constant negativity about this war, I am glad to hear you are an absolutist…if not in this life, at least the next….
April 20th, 2008 at 11:33 PM
Journalism? Are you kidding me? The last place to find journalism is on the shrinking pages of the NYT. No wonder the stock is tanking as circulation drops off the cliff.
If you want journalism, read Michael Totten. Might learn something.
As for poor Kim, she needs to take her medication.
April 20th, 2008 at 11:51 PM
I worked for many years for a daily newspaper and I’ve seen this happen. A reporter or a team of reporters invests many hours in an investigation, turns up very little and writes a long story anyhow. Nobody wants to throw all that work away. I can think of only one much-investigated story that was trashed completely for fear of a libel suit.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:29 AM
dumping the story the weekend before the Pennsylvania primary…
like flying the kitty hawk into the sun.
It was a dead news week, if you don’t want to report on the pope and don’t have anything new and bad to say about Iraq.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:57 AM
I bought a new york times before for my flight the other day, probably out of habit. When the plane landed I noticed that I hadn’t read a single page, my new habit.