NRJ Book Reviews: When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina

Abstract

W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 278 pages, $22.50 (cloth).Review by Steve HallockFrom the infamous apologies by The New York Times and The Washington Post for reporting lapses that helped enable the Bush administration to make the case for war against Iraq to media manipulation and spin by the president and his cronies, this book explores what have become rather widely recognized failings of the modern press during the Bush era. But despite the familiarity of the subject, this well-documented indictment of modern journalism in the context of the Iraq story is a useful exploration of the reasons behind these failings. These include shrinking audiences, which bring lowered demands for press accountability; a scoop mentality, which favors timely inaccuracies over delayed truths; ownership conglomeration, which encourages a symbiotic environment of press-government cooperation rather than what ought to be a more antagonistic relationship; a shifting press agenda from issues critical to the nation's democracy toward soft news; and the book's primary focus, reliance on official sources as primary providers of policy information.The strength of When the Press Fails is the gathering into one volume for analysis examples of Bush administration policies in the Iraq story and the troubling press treatment of those policies. The Iraq story was more than the manufactured reasoning for the war. It also was the rendition and torture of prisoners in violation of constitutional protections and the government's eavesdropping on citizens without the benefit of a court warrant. This agenda was carried out with the blessings of a weak-kneed Congress and a press that allowed the administration to mangle the Fourth Amendment and to put forth unchallenged, terrorism-based claims on behalf of national security. All of this was done to maintain what the authors call a public-relations democracy.To strengthen their argument, the authors offer not only a content analysis of national print and broadcast media coverage of the buildup to war and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib but also a discussion of the press coverage of another major public policy gaffe following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The contrast of journalists playing a more activist, democracy-caretaker in the Katrina tragedy strengthens the argument of press meltdown in Iraq and its wake.It is necessary to keep in mind, though, that cozy press/source relationships and lazy oversight watchdogging are not phenomena unique to the George W. Bush era. Witness the cronyism that Wisconsin Republican Senator Joe McCarthy enjoyed with the press corps, playing cards and sipping bourbon with reporters until his own hubris and the work of enterprising reporters like Philip Potter of the Baltimore Sun, Murrey Marder of The Washington Post, Anthony Lewis of The Washington Daily News and, of course, Edward R. Murrow of CBS News exposed his demagoguery. The Kennedy administration, like the Reagan team, enjoyed the coddling of a Washington, D.C., press corps. And a knowing press was more ally than opponent of civil rights abuses, including torture and lynchings, for decades during the Jim Crow years. That complicity persisted until a few brave editors, emboldened by some courageous civil rights leaders, took up the civil rights torch.It also should be remembered that the Iraq war and accompanying prisoner and civil rights abuses were part of a planned policy that included press management and intimidation of the opposition with the threatened taint of unpatriotic behavior; whereas, the administration during and after the Katrina disaster ad-libbed without the advantage of advance knowledge or a prepared public relations campaign capable of anticipating criticism and question. …