Toward a unified theory of the Times, Part 1. Brad DeLong critiques Matthew Yglesias's critique of Neil Lewis's effort at defanging the Boston Globe's Senate spying group that I critiqued in my last post, and (in spite of how head-spinningly meta this all is) he makes some points that bear further thinking.

Matt Y. (the post Brad links to, by the way, is not as I write to be found in the January TAPPED archives) considers the Lewis article an instance of the Times having a bit of a snit: "a huge story gets ignored in the national press just because the story was broken by a smaller, regional outlet and the big boys don't want to admit they got scooped." DeLong thinks Yglesias has missed the larger context:

I've heard too many reporters tell me that they have to cut the administration and the Republicans a break in their stories or they'll have their access and sources cut off. I've had too many editors tell me that other editors are doubting their own judgment, and in close (and maybe not so close?) calls deciding to give the administration and the Republicans a break because of what the reaction to being "overly critical" will be. We have deep, systematic flaws in our press corps. And it's not just an unwillingness to admit that a regional paper got a scoop.

Like Brad here, my tendency is to think of reporting as the systematic outcome of a process: to want to understand what reporters write in terms of the social character of journalists as a class, by accounting for working conditions and institutional pressures. And while I certainly believe that reporters are facing the kind of pressures Brad mentions, I don't think these things fully explain the recent political tenor of the Times.

My impression is that, at least in the realm of Presidential politics, the Times has become a ferociously consistent disseminator of Republican spin. It's not just a question of bias induced by fear—of loss of access, of editorial disapproval, of attacks from the mighty right-wing Wurlitzer. The Times has uniformly promoted to its front page reporters for whom the legitimacy of Republican policies and politicans appears to be a simple, unanswerable given, and who seem conversely to feel in their bones the illegitimacy of Democrats and the irrelevancy of left-of-center opinion. At the Times these days, it don't play A1 if it don't play Republican.

The Times has always, with historically rare exception (Pentagon Papers, anyone?), deferred to the Executive*: believing itself to be an institution of nearly equal weight in American life, it defers to Presidential prerogative and thereby ratifies its own. But that tendency doesn't explain the drift of Times political coverage either, which has moved from deference to the President to something like active bias in his favor. Is this situation the product of policy or does it reflect something about the social development of the national political press? I don't know, but it's an angle I expect to keep following.

*Update: Guess it slipped my mind about that other little instance in which the Times decided to abandon deference. Paging Jeff Gerth ...

posted by michael  6:52:18 PM  
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Alternate realities. Sometimes, the politics of A1 is all about what's not on the front page. Take the story in yesterday's Boston Globe that revealed the extent to which Senate Democrats have been under secret surveillance by their opponents:

Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

GOP staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee (the scene of fierce battles over hard-right nominees like Miguel Estrada) "exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password," giving them access to Democratic "talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight—and with what tactics." The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms began investigating after conservative papers got hold of a number of confidential Democratic memos back in November. Things seem significantly to have heated up: sources in the investigation told the Globe that "the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now known to have been far more extensive than the November incident," and the office of the Sergeant-at-Arms has interviewed "about 120 people" so far and seized "more than half a dozen computers," including a server from Bill Frist's office.

Seems like a big deal to me—especially when you undestand that the context of all this is the ongoing DeLay-ization of the Republican party, which seems finally determined to recognize neither custom, rule, nor law that might make a check on its exercise of power.

But perhaps these events are only happening in Bizarro World. At the Times, certainly, all is calm. When there's front-page real estate to be devoted to Jodi Wilgoren's breaking TV review, a yawner like Neil A. Lewis's article can't deserve better than A12:

Senate Inquiry Into Memos That Went Astray Nears End

The Senate's sergeant-at-arms said on Thursday that he was nearing an end to an investigation into how several confidential memorandums written by Democratic staff aides about dealing with judicial nominations ended up in the hands of Republican staff members.

Nothing to see here, in other words. Lewis places everything about the investigation into the past tense:

After the Democrats complained that their confidential memorandums were being stolen and distributed to conservative news outlets, [Sergeant-at-Arms William] Pickle began an investigation on Nov. 19. He had committee computers seized and used Secret Service agents and a computer expert from General Dynamics to determine whether and how the Democrats' computer files were hacked into as part of a possible improper political operation.

He said through a spokeswoman on Thursday that he expected to issue a report soon to the Judiciary Committee. The progress of Mr. Pickle's investigation was reported most recently by The Boston Globe on Thursday.

No further word about what, if anything, might have been in that Globe report. Suggesting that the version of the Globe that appeared yesterday in Times-reality didn't make much of a fuss about the whole thing, either.

Oh, and those staffers (emphasis on plural), that year-long surveillance? It was just one guy, and anyway he was a junior guy, and it was just a couple of months, and anyway if he hadn't been having a little fun with Dem documents he'd probably have been surfing Internet porn, so give him a break:

Manuel C. Miranda, a former Republican Judiciary Committee staff member, ... said that a junior member on the staff of Senator Orrin G. Hatch ... had discovered a flaw in the computer system that allowed him to read some of the Democratic computer traffic. Mr. Miranda ... said that the junior aide was reading the Democratic documents from about May 2002 until the early fall of 2002. ... He described the junior staff aide as someone who had a great deal of time on his hands, and he said most of the documents the aide gave him were of little value.

"There was no systematic surveillance, no hacking, no stealing and no violation of any Senate rules," he said.

Whew! Glad that's all cleared up. Who needs a Sergeant-at-Arms when you've got Manuel C. Miranda to explain it all to you?

Remarkably, in a fourteen-paragraph article Manuel C. is given a full six paragraphs to tell his side of the story. Two Democrats are given one tacked-on paragraph for generic "this was a bad thing" comments that don't address anything Miranda says—and one of the Democratic quotes in fact is there to endorse the idea that "there [is] no need for any criminal investigation"!

At what point should the Times just save us the angst and start printing GOP press releases straight?

posted by michael  12:54:56 PM  
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Nice work if you can get it. Jodi Wilgoren is so far up Howard Dean's ass at this point that she oughta do him a favor while she's there and check for polyps. But by what standard of news judgement does she earn a front-page, above-the-fold byline for watching somebody else interview Howard and Judy on TV? Talk about phoning it in.

Guess Jodi's just being rewarded for a job well done.

posted by michael  10:48:36 AM  
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