Altered States: Fear and Loathing in the MSM

Jonathan Alter, Newsweek editor and columnist, is generally considered a pillar the Mainstream Media (MSM). He recently got into a tiff with online reporter Jebediah Reed of Radar Online, and the result was not pretty. He decided to attack a young reporter and show him how the MSM takes care of those who dare to dis it. A lot of the smoke has now cleared though, and it's Alter's mangled body that lies trampled on the floor. This would be of minor note if it were not for the fact that Alter's tantrum exhibits a lot of the things wrong with the way that he and his colleagues engage in journalistic malpractice.

Alter's column on Huffpost is here. First he has to complain about bloggers:

There's one dimension of the blogosphere that never ceases to amaze me: Some people disbelieve nearly everything they read in the "mainstream media" -- and believe nearly everything they read online. Never mind that the ground-breaking reporting on which they base their opinions often comes from the MSM publications like Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

This, sad to say, is a crock. The MSM has mostly ignored such stories as the US attn purge and the corrupt congressmen. Their speed is more like Anna Nicole and the DC Madam. That's OK though, since Alter isn't going to come up with a single example. His real goal is to put a smackdown on a young reporter.

I'm also glad to see the magazine Radar sending young reporters like Jebediah Reed out to cover politics. The more the merrier. Unfortunately, Reed is a bad reporter, and his bad reporting of a 30-second sidewalk conversation involving me, Edsall and former Sen. Mike Gravel is now rocketing around the web.

Reed's depiction of my ride uptown in a Checker cab driven by Gravel was accurate enough, and nicely written. Then, en route to lunch, we passed Edsall walking the other direction. We stopped to chat. When the subject turned to David Broder, I mentioned a recent column of Broder's that I hadn't liked (Broder had warned the Democratic Congress not to overreach on oversight; I think the Democrats need to press even harder on the Bush Administration). Tom was a colleague of Broder at the Post for many years and seemed reluctant to trash him, so he allowed only that Broder could sometimes be "cranky." I don't remember him calling Broder "the voice of the people," but if he did, it was said with a pleasantly arch tone, neither serious nor sarcastic. And while there's exactly no one on the face of the earth that grizzled reporters like us would "matter of factly" call "the voice of the people" (No, not even Mike Gravel), Edsall and I both know that whatever disagreements we may have with recent Broder columns, he is an honest reporter and no ivy tower thumb-sucker.

At the restaurant, a group of us had lunch. I explicitly told Reed that it was off-the-record, and he explicitly agreed. (Not a good habit to get into, Jebidiah, screwing with that one.) I should have known better than to trust a reporter I didn't know, but throwing him out of the lunch so that Gravel and I could talk didn't seem sporting.

There are a few little problems with Alter's story here. He doesn't remember a remark, but he does remember the tone it was said in? Pulleeze! He also seems to have forgotten that Reed had a tape recorder which he put on the table and turned on, except for those parts of the conversation the parties agreed would be off the record. From Reed's response, via Brad DeLong at Shrillblog:

Fresh Intelligence : Radar Online: The last thing I had in mind when I wrote that profile of Mike Gravel at the Columbia rally was getting into a Web tiff with you. I've read and enjoyed many of your columns. So when you called me out as a "bad reporter" in your HuffPo screed, it would have been traumatic if I wasn't sure my reporting from that day was bulletproof.... Tom Edsall did say that David Broder is the "voice of the people," and he did say it as I reported.... Gravel was accusing Broder of not believing in popular democracy.... Edsall, without changing the tone of the conversation, said: "He [Broder] is democracy. He's the voice of the people." It sounds like you might not have heard Edsall, but--scout's honor--it was not said archly.... [Y]ou're welcome to pop by Radar HQ and listen to the exchange on tape.

Accusing me of being a bad judge of tone is one thing--accusing me of being unethical is quite another.... You say the lunch was off the record and that I accepted those terms and then broke the agreement. Here's what really happened: I made arrangements with Mike Gravel's press agent, Alex Colvin, to meet up with the candidate.... When the rally was finished, Alex invited me to join the senator for lunch. That invitation was extended to me as a reporter, not as a friendly guest at an off-the-record sit-down with Jonathan Alter. Throughout the lunch, you might remember, I had my tape recorder running and sitting on the table as I was taking notes. The question of what was on and off the record came up precisely once: You were talking about a segment you'd done... and asked me not to use what you had just said, noting that the Edwards piece hadn't aired yet. I said no problem, made a somewhat exaggerated gesture of putting down my notebook, and, of course, abided by that agreement. I picked up my pad and started taking notes after the conversation turned back to Gravel...

Alter's case comes down to the fact that Reed reported something (another reporter dissing Broder) that annoyed him even while eating lunch on Alter's dime. Unfortunately that's the main thing wrong with the MSM today - being willing to be bought for the price of lunch.

Alter set out to embarass a young reporter, but Alter is the guy with egg all over his face - a rare example of justice.

This incident can be considered just another example of what Kevin Drum has described as the fear and loathing that the MSM has for bloggers. This f&l is not just a prejudice. The MSM, and especially the press, is threatened by the rise of the internet. Part of it threatens their egos - those writing superficial nonsense now find themselves quickly challenged. At bottom, though, it's economic. Newspapers are losing readers and income.

Unfortunately, there isn't an online medium yet capable of taking its place. Even as newspapers and television cut reporting to concentrate on pure crap, their share of income shrinks. There is a kind of vicious cycle where total crap from Murdoch and friends gradually displaces anything of value in the press, leaving it uninteresting to anyone with an IQ.