FATUOUS: Was American journalism ever great?

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2024

Cronkite then, a nightly garbage can now: Labor Day is drawing on fast. With it comes the apocryphal start of the general election campaign.

Given the withdrawal of President Biden from the race, a special burden has been placed on American political journalism this time around.  To wit:

The Democratic Party's nominee only entered the race in late July. Given the foreshortened time frame for this year's campaign, can our journalistic establishment rise to the task of covering this year's contest?

More broadly, what is the state of American journalism as Labor Day approaches? Also, what there ever a time when our political journalism was more capable than it is today? Can we imagine the following challenge:

Can we imagine trying to make American journalism great again?

Let's journey back to 1960. As we noted yesterday, Candidate Kennedy didn't announce until January of that year. Was this nation's political journalism actually great at that time? 

It's hard to make an objective assessment. But let's take a look at the record.

There's no such thing as perfect journalism, and our journalism wasn't perfect back then. In his iconic book, The Making of the President 1960, Theodore White describes appalling conduct on the part of major reporters as they flew around the country, with the candidate, on the Kennedy plane.

Late in his book, White describes a fairly obvious type of glad-handing aimed by Candidate Kennedy at his traveling press. To our ear, White was perhaps a bit oblivious to the degree of inappropriate conduct he went on to describe:

WHITE (page 338): There is no doubt that this kindliness, respect and cultivation of the press colored all the reporting that came from the Kennedy campaign...By the last weeks of the campaign, those forty or fifty national correspondents who had followed Kennedy since the beginning of his electoral exertions into the November days had become more than a press corps—they had become his friends and, some of them, his most devoted admirers.

Good God! White continues:

WHITE (continuing directly): When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr. Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.

Good God! But so wrote White, in one of the most famous books ever written about American electoral politics.

In fuller context, White never quite seemed to recognize the depth of misconduct he was describing—and he insisted that the Nixon reporters, who enjoyed no such camaraderie with the (justifiably?) suspicious candidate, were experienced professionals who struggled to be fair in their reporting.

So it may have been. But even then, when America was still great, White was describing gross journalistic misconduct as the summer gave way to the fall. 

Experienced journalists flew about, singing satirical songs about Nixon with the Kennedy staff. That said, it's hard to believe that the actual state of our political journalism had achieved the depths it now achieves every day—every day and every night, for example on the Fox News Channel.

There were no "cable news " channels in 1960. These was no such thing as cable, and therefore no "cable news."

There was no Internet; there was no "social media." Talk radio barely existed—and it didn't start to emerge as a national phenomenon until something like ten years later.

By way of contrast:

As Labor Day approaches this year, we have the Fox News Channel opening the garbage can it opens each night at 10 p.m. Eastern. (That's 7 p.m. on the coast.)

On a nightly basis, the garbage can opens with Greg Gutfeld directing his array of baldly misogynist insults at the liberal and Democrat [sic] Party women with whom he disagrees.

Last night, his second joke involved an insult about the way the 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi currently looks in a bathing suit (recent photo provided). By 10:03, his jokes about sex with children were done, and he had started his issue-based "monologue."

When he did, he quickly directed an insult at the women of The View, who were said, on this occasion, to resemble a bunch of horses. By 10:05, it was back to Pelosi, this tome with an insult built around the theme that she has had too many face-lifts or has used too much Botox. 

Nothing resembling this garbage can existed in 1960—and this garbage can airs every weekday night, with a rerun on one weekend night. As we've noted in the past, our finer, higher-class news orgs almost wholly ignore the existence of this garbage can—although a very unusual bit of reporting occurs in today's Washington Post.

The report appears beneath this dual headline. 

The report concerns a remark by the slippery Jesse Watters on Monday evening's edition of The Five. In our view, it was a rather typical comment which had the rare effect of occasioning instant pushback from two of the Fox News Channel's many obliging female propagandists, who are generally prepared to ignore almost anything.

On this occasion, two women objected. Dural headline included, Jeremy Barr reports:

Jesse Watters addresses backlash over provocative Kamala Harris punditry
“People are misconstruing my comments to mean something inappropriate,” the Fox News host said Tuesday.

Fox News host Jesse Watters attempted to explain himself on Tuesday after he received backlash for a comment he made one night earlier about Vice President Kamala Harris.

During a discussion on the talk show “The Five” about Harris’s role in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Watters appeared to use crude language to speculate on how a President Harris would handle foreign policy.

“We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes,” he said on Monday. “She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

Watters said on Tuesday’s edition of the panel show that he didn’t mean anything untoward by the comment, which drew significant blowback on social media.

Along with external backlash, Watters’s comment drew a sharp rebuke in the moments after he uttered it from his two female co-hosts, Dana Perino and Jeanine Pirro.

“Jesse Watters!” Perino exclaimed, while Pirro said, “I don’t like that,” and told him to “take it back,” even as Watters protested that he was speaking “figuratively.”

We happened to see the remark in real time. To our ear, it seemed like extremely typical fare from the slippery "silly boy" Watters—possibly even somewhat milder than his normal "silly boy" fare.

What made this event stand out was the instant pushback from Perino and Pirro, a pair of Fox News Channel stars who are typically prepared to ignore any amount of misogynist insult, no matter how blatant.

This morning, the Post reports on the Monday evening's instant pushback—on the pushback from Perino and Pirro, but also from social media. That said, this general kind of garbage-can conduct is broadcast to millions of viewers on a nightly basis. 

This generates almost no reporting or commentary from our finer, higher-end news orgs. 

Nothing resembling this garbage can existed in 1960. Reporters may have been singing partisan songs with one candidate's staffers, but we the people weren't being exposed to denizens of the garbage can like the extremely direct Gutfeld and the much more slippery Watters.

In our view, what has happened on MSNBC in recent years has been bad enough. What has happened on the Fox News Channel involves garbage-can conduct as part of braindead, birdbrain pseudo-discussions—pseudo-discussions conducted by panels like the one assembled for Gutfeld last night.

Last night's four-member Gutfeld! panel included two (2) D-list comedians, plus a former professional wrestler and a former VH-1 veejay. With the help of this ridiculous panel, he program's garbage-can host conducted the evening's pseudo-discussions. 

Nothing dimly resembling this gong-show existed back in the day, when America was still great—when we were able to conduct our White House campaigns in what would now be record time.

In our view, what has happened on MSNBC has been bad enough. What happens each night on the Fox News Channel is a journalistic, intellectual, moral and societal disaster—a product of cultural squalor.

That said, our finer news orgs largely ignore this nightly cesspool / gong-show. Judging from appearances, no one is eager to tangle with Fox.

This brings us back to the larger question we're attempting to raise this week. What's the nature of the campaign reporting which emerges from our higher-end orgs? Is it possible that such reporting tilts toward the fatuous, as we're suggesting this week?

Sad! We're going to wait until tomorrow to review the recent "interview" with Candidate Trump conducted by CBS News. For today, we will direct your attention to a letter which appears in today's New York Times.

Three letters concern last Sunday's column by the paper's Maureen Dowd. The second letter describes the state of affairs we've been citing this week:

To the Editor:

While I usually enjoy Ms. Dowd’s views, in Sunday’s column I saw something that has been reoccurring in all newspaper, television and social media coverage: a demand that Kamala Harris explain her policy positions. (“She has to show she has what it takes once she steps away from the teleprompter,” Ms. Dowd wrote. “Can she manage to get through a minimum of policy stuff with no viral blunders?”)

But no similar demands are made of her deranged opponent. He insults, name-calls and carries on in myriad ways, and it’s usually waved off as “That’s Trump!” He isn’t asked serious policy questions by the press, and he responds to the questions he is asked with lies, a change of subject or various other non-responses. In subsequent reporting, it’s meekly acknowledged that he lied, changed the subject, etc.

When is the national press going to expect the same level of competence from Republican candidates that is demanded of Democratic candidates?

J— I— / Phoenix

Even in blistering Phoenix, this Times reader has managed to notice an oddity in current attempts at campaign press coverage:

Sensibly enough, our journalists say—and say and say and say and say—that Candidate Harris should submit to "serious journalistic interviews," during which she'll be forced to answer "difficult questions."

Judged by traditional norms, that expectation is perfectly fair. But along the way, our brightest journalistic lights fail to notice an obvious fact:

The other candidate, Candidate Trump, hasn't answered anyone's difficult question either—and he's been in the race for several years! This fact has been noticed in Phoenix, but apparently nowhere else!

Tomorrow, we'll show you, in painful detail, what happened when that candidate pretended to answer some rather peculiar questions in a brief interview session with CBS News. 

We'll show you the questions asked, and we'll show you the "answers." We'll show you the embarrassing way the interview was reported within the chambers of CBS News. 

It's easy to see that "cable news" has opened a type of garbage can which didn't exist when America was great. Greg Gutfeld emerges from the garbage can first, with Watters performing a similar role in a much more elusive manner.

It's easy to see that this garbage can now exists. It's also easy to see that our finer, higher-class orgs don't want to discuss this fact.

That said, is it possible that the performance of those high-end orgs might possibly tilt toward the fatuous? This afternoon, we'll touch on a guest essay and a front-page news report in this morning's New York Times. 

Tomorrow, though, we'll visit CBS News.

Walter Cronkite took over as anchor there in 1962. 

"And that's the way it is," he would say each night. In 1963, his voice broke—he had to stop and gather himself—when it fell to him to report the murder of President Kennedy.

That was CBS News back then. Last week, CBS News got to interview Candidate Trump. 

CBS News got to interview Trump! Tomorrow, we'll show you what happened.

Tomorrow: All the way down