AP lets Cheney off the hook
Posted by Mediascaper on January 8, 2009
I’ll leave the sweeping indictments of the mainstream media (MSM) to others. Suffice it to say, today’s AP’s interview with Vice President Cheney is an example of inadequate journalism, where assertions were allowed to stand without further question or illumination.
To summarize Cheney’s statements:
- No one foresaw the economic mess we’re in, and President Bush is not obligated to apologize for it
- The CIA did nothing illegal in its interrogations of suspected terrorists
- North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor
- Iraq is not a mess
- Withdrawing from Iraq would be “irresponsible”
And that’s it. At no point in the article is Cheney asked to explain, clarify or defend anything he said. So what was the point of this? To learn that’s he’s looking forward to fishing in the Snake River when he leaves office? The job of the objective reporter is to be curious, to be skeptical, to be inquisitive, to provide insight and enlighten the reader, especially where matters of national import and our elected officials are concerned.
On PressThink, Jay Rosen quotes Geneva Overholser, who exposes the failings of the institutionalized notion of objectivity:
Big Notion death was a theme in journalism in 2004, coming not from the margins but the middle. Geneva Overholser of the Missouri School of Journalism, former editor of the Des Moines Register, former ombudsman of the Washington Post, said it:
“This was the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism. The way it is currently construed, “objectivity” makes the media easily manipulable by an executive branch intent on and adept at controlling the message. It produces a rigid orthodoxy, excluding voices beyond the narrowly conventional.”
I’ll be blunt: The AP’s interview with Cheney isn’t journalism; it’s stenography. It’s not terrible. But it should have been much better.
