Paxety Pages

I think it's easy to find political bias when one, such as Hugh, is interested in and motivated by politics, but that may not be the only motivation behind a story. Some newsrooms have lively political discussions between the liberals and conservatives working there.  But not everyone in a newsroom is interested in politics.

I spent 13+ years in newsrooms - mostly TV, and I saw, dealt with and managed the different personalities found there. While this may come as a shock to bloggers and talk radio listeners, a lot of the reporters, producers and desk people are no more interested in politics than the average American.  Say, Paris Hilton.  Some are the beautiful people who are In TV to be On TV.  Others are the folks who were mediocre students, who searched out a college major with little or no math and science requirement.  Journalism, or broadcast communications, fit the bill. While these folks may give lip service to liberal issues (register as Democrats, believe in global warming, for instance) they are the same as any other swing voter - voting on the key issue of the election, the economy in 1992 - the war and security in 2004.

But there is another personality in the newsroom, thankfully rare, and Rathergate may have been the result of that personality.  I liken it to serial killers and created the term to describe in - journalistic serial killer.

First, I don't know Mary Mapes or any of the other people who lost their jobs.  I met Dan Rather once at the Democratic National Convention in 1988. I don't claim to know him, either. I have no idea whether these people have the personality I am describing - I'm simply raising the issue that there are non-political motivations present in newsrooms that could explain Rathergate.

Powerline says:

 the fundamental problem that led to the downfall of 60 Minutes and, perhaps, CBS News, was the fact that no one involved in the reportorial or editorial process was a Republican or a conservative. If there had been anyone in the organization who did not share Mary Mapes's politics, who was not desperate to counteract the Swift Boat Vets and deliver the election to the Democrats, then certain obvious questions would have been asked: Where, exactly, did these documents come from? What reason is there to think that they really originated in the "personal files" of a long-dead National Guard officer, if his family has no knowledge of them? How did such modern-looking memos come to be produced in the early 1970s? How can these critical memos, allegedly by Jerry Killian, be reconciled with the glowing evaluations of Lt. Bush that Killian signed? Why haven't you interviewed General "Buck" Staudt, who is casually slandered in one of the alleged memos? Why didn't you show the memos to General Bobby Hodges, rather than reading phrases from them to him over the telephone? Isn't it a funny coincidence that these "newly discovered" memos are attributed to the one person in this story who is conveniently dead?

All of these questions could be answered non-politically - by considering the journalistic serial killer.

Some people get into journalism as a means of gaining power over others.  They have no compassion for the people they are "getting" - just as a serial killer has no compassion for his victims.  These journalistic serial killers are willing to do almost anything to "get the story" because their entire motivation is gaining power for themselves. One reporter I know even admitted to me she was in TV news to, in her words, "get people."

In one instance I'm familiar with a reporter learned the police had evidence from a criminal case locked in a particular room at headquarters.  The reporter broke into the room to get a look at the evidence and was caught.  The station General Manager eventually talked the police into releasing the reporter, but this is a case where, in order to get the story, the reporter was willing to commit a crime.  Even more so, the reporter viewed putting the story on TV as more important than allowing the legal system to prosecute the defendant. In fact, if the station had aired the story about the evidence, the police said it may have prevented prosecution of the defendant, or at least forced a change of venue.

Similarly, we've all seen stories where the TV crew hides microphones and cameras and the reporter pretends to be someone else in order to get a story. Dan Rather himself created and made popular the ambush interview during his first stint on 60 Minutes.  An ambush interview is where the reporter stakes out a location, waits for the interview subject to come along, then jumps out and forces an interview on the spot. Those interviews were strongly criticized by more ethical media people because the interview subject would be unprepared for the questions and may give inaccurate answers, and because the entire look of the interview made the subject look guilty, whether he was or not.

Michelle Malkin writes about the attempt to use Col David Hackworth's criticism of Mr. Bush. Hackworth, without any direct knowledge of anything, concluded that the documents were genuine. Mapes wanted to use his interview in the piece. This is exactly the tactic used by the journalistic serial killer - use anything that might help you "get" the target of the story.

These journalistic serial killers also terrorize the news staff itself.  I found one quote in The New York Times very interesting (Heyward is CBS News President Andrew Heyward:

(T)he central explanation for how CBS went wrong seemed to be a case of a star producer overruling the better judgments of an entire series of top news executives. One senior CBS executive said many staff members seemed to be more afraid of Ms. Mapes than of Mr. Heyward, which could help undermine his position with the staff.

Captain Ed observes:

As I have noted earlier, Heyward appears to carry little weight within his own news division. His early warnings to substantiate "every syllable" of the Killian memos not only went unheeded, but completely ignored by his staff and producer Mary Mapes. Once the story broke, Heyward dithered in the face of its immediate and substantial criticism regarding the authenticity of the memos that formed the core of the story. He allowed the same team that produced the report to dictate the networks' response.

I've worked in newsrooms exactly like this - the employees were more afraid of a the journalistic serial killer than all the bosses combined. And the bosses are afraid of them, too. Why?  Because the journalistic serial killer was out to destroy people - and that included people within the newsroom as well as without.  It's hard to get across how tyrannical, viscous and controlling these people are - that's why I coined the term. I'm not a psychologist, but they certainly seem sociopathic to me.

Rathergate's more political-appearing aspects - Mapes contacts with the DNC - could well have been motivated by the desire to destroy another person. It would fit the personalities I've observed in the past. It could simply be the desire to "get" George W. Bush, a big name, powerful person without regard to his politics.

When have they gone after a liberal you ask?  Remember, they initially went after President Clinton when the Monica Lewinsky story broke. You'll recall that the network anchors were in Cuba reporting on Pope John Paul II's visit there.  They packed up and came home to report on Monica.  Sam Donaldson returned to the White House correspondent beat.  They tried to get Mr. Clinton - he was slicker and smarter than they were.

Update - Mary Mapes has released a statement through her attorneys.  She denies any political bias.  But, in the second paragraph, she attacks:

I am shocked by the vitriolic scape-goating in Les Moonves’s statement. I am very concerned that his actions are motivated by corporate and political considerations -- ratings rather than journalism. Mr. Moonves’s response to the review panel’s report and the panel’s assessment of the evidence it developed in its investigation combine not only to condemn me, but to put all investigative reporting in the CBS tradition at risk.

Seems to fit the personality to me. In fact, the entire statement seems aimed at two things - continuing the attack and controlling the situation.