On Monday, the same day that the Supreme Court was to open hearings on President Obama’s nominee Elena Kagan, the first work day since the passage of sweeping and complicated legislation regulating finance–the largest sector of the hobbled American economy, and with huge unanswered questions about the direction of the country in everything from Afghanistan and the Middle East to energy policy at home, the leading online publication for Washington political coverage ran a two-thousand word article on none of these subjects.
“Let me get this straight,” one reader said as he read the article, titled “Theater of the Absurd” by Mike Allen and Glenn Thrush. “Another blow-by-blow report on the drama around the White House, written from the perspective of cranky theater critics? Come on, guys. Are you kidding me?” (The reader asked to remain unnamed so he could protect his future viability in the media system.)
Welcome to what one exhausted news junkie calls, “theater criticism of the absurd,” where the American public’s precious and limited attention for national issues is whipsawed by the wild and almost always unimaginative thumb-sucking of the DC press corps, which threatens to make every news event and crisis into an occasion for debate about “how the White House is handling public perceptions” and “how all of this will play in the coming campaign” rather than a moment for more serious reporting of how and whether the nation’s underlying problems are being addressed and solved.
In the weeks leading up to the Allen/Thrush opus, Americans had been transfixed by the Big Spill in the Gulf, shocked to learn that the country’s top commander in Afghanistan was seemingly running his own war, and baffled by complex and obscure negotiations between Congress and the banking and Wall Street titans that plunged the country into a deep recession two years ago. There was plenty of life, death, blood and treasure on the line, and one hoped that Washington’s rising new media stars would devote their efforts to digging in and explaining things, or even involving their readers in helping untangle these complex subjects. But instead, Allen and Thrush provided their news-starved readers with yet one more “behind-the-scenes” look at the White House’s “handling” of these dramas.
Privately, reporters like Allen and Thrush undoubtedly talk of being prisoners to a perverse and hyper-competitive media system that rewards reporters for revealing momentary ephemera and avoiding harder questions that might damage the access they need to generate such tidbits on an ongoing basis. Yes, Allen and Thrush showed their mastery of today’s internet-driven Beltway news business by working long hours over the weekend and posting their 2095-word story early (6:58am!) on a Monday morning when it was most likely to make waves. Yes, it was chock full of colorful quotes from President Obama and top advisers detailing in a sycophantic but knowing way how they had navigated the crises of the last two weeks, including the tick-tock on how they took advantage of Rep. Joe Barton’s defense of BP and how they stage-managed General McChrystal’s firing. Yes, it especially made the White House communications team look especially good for its “rapid, forceful” response to events. But their story, like much of the “journalism” coming out of Washington these days, did little to create public understanding or shine light on actual problems needing attention.
Had they been asked about Allen/Thrush’s opus and the priorities driving such coverage, the Politico’s editors might have said something like: “We’re being hammered from all sides for our reporting, so we must be doing something right. We know our critics don’t like us, but we have no regrets. Frankly, there’s not a lot of time for us to brood about potshots from the peanut gallery.” And they might have added:
“This is a fickle business. One day, the prevailing notion in Washington is, ‘The news media is floundering. Their business model is on the line.’ A week later, you’re on a roll. You can’t get swept up in these manic mood swings. You have to keep your eye on goals you set and see them through.”
Were there people inside or outside of Washington actually addressing what to do about the Big Spill, or the ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan, or the financial mess created by Wall Street? Was anyone exploring government’s role in each of these crises and searching for ways out of the stale and dead-end debate between “Big Government” and “Small Government” advocates that seems to stymie all policy change? Was anyone considering that the press’s reflexive focus on the doings and sayings of one man, the President, and his staff, was creating and reinforcing a false picture of events and a false expectation that this one man could conceivably be “in control”? And did anyone think that perhaps the 24-7 always-on media system was being driven even further towards doing theater criticism instead of real reporting because that’s the easiest way to feed the online news beast?
We don’t know, though now we do know, yet again, reading Allen/Thrush review Obama/Emanuel/Axelrod’s latest show, that if the press considers press management to be the defining measure of a presidency, the president’s staff will make sure to show off when its press management goes well. The politics of the moment will matter more than its substance. And, while I hate to say it, the oil spill remain a dominant metaphor of our times: the infosphere just keeps being polluted by a raw gusher of undigested and in many case un-nutritious information. Can we make it stop?
June 28, 2010