The crazy world that is Inside-the-Beltway politics is agog this week over revelations of the symbiotic, sycophantic relationship between the White House and Washington journalists. While it’s well known here, the dirty secret of Washington journalism is how reliant the press is on the government officials it covers — and how the dependency is only going to get worse.
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old. Their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” said Rhodes. “They literally know nothing.”
What many Washington reporters don’t want you to know is that they need the people they cover — desperately — and that the role of the press as a provider of accountability that puts a check on government power is in deep decline. More likely, dead as a door nail.
To whit: White House National Security communications chief Ben Rhodes, who not only spins policy but makes it, spoke contemptuously this week to The New York Times about the reporters he puppets.
“All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
But it’s not just the kids. The adult journalists are lapping up White House spin and spreading it across the Internet, too. “There are sort of these force multipliers,” said Rhodes’ assistant, Ned Price. “We have our compadres. I will reach out to a couple people, and, you know, I wouldn’t want to name them — and I’ll give them some color, and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.”
The ability to manipulate the press gives Rhodes awesome power to shape the news.
Rhodes unabashedly admitted to the Times that he was trying to suppress a story — the kidnapping by Iran of 10 American sailors — hoping it wouldn’t break before Obama’s State of the Union speech that evening and steal the president’s thunder. He failed only because others leaked it.
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The Times also details how Rhodes worked up the fiction that serious negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program began in 2013 after a supposedly “moderate” faction took power in Tehran, even though talks actually began in 2012 with the “hardliners.” In reality, both “factions” in Iran were controlled by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomenei.
“By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making,” the Times wrote.
Once the deal was struck, the White House rolled out allied “experts” to sell it. “We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes said. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
With the press so compliant, it should be no surprise that it took Congress and a watchdog group of lawyers — not some modern-day Woodward and Bernstein — to break the stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails and about how the American public was lied to about Benghazi.
The new patsy press exists in part because most Washington journalists are Democrats who were inspired by Obama. When the president quipped in 2009 at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that “you all voted for me,” there was knowing laughter — because everyone understood it was no joke.
But there are deeper reasons why the Obama White House has been able to play the press, and why things will be even worse under Hillary Clinton.
The new patsy press exists in part because most Washington journalists are Democrats who were inspired by Obama.
The move from print to the web brought the death of the classified section and dried up ad revenues, and the business model for mainstream journalism collapsed. Journalists seeking to sustain their publications’ viability are desperate for “scoops” and inside information — the “color” Price speaks of — which the White House parcels out with the tacit understanding that those who do tough reporting will be punished by facing a lack of access. Reporters are paralyzed by the thought that their editors will wonder why the competition found out first that, say, Obama will visit Hiroshima, as just one news org put out first on Tuesday. Lack of access will get a reporter sent out of the White House and over to the city desk to cover local news.
What’s more, with the public increasingly getting its news from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, the White House has less and less need for reporters, who must dutifully bow to people like Rhodes in order to get the increasingly small amount of inside ball the White House pitches them.
The web has permitted the White House to set up its own de facto news organization, with its own Tweets, Facebook posts, and a YouTube channel featuring press secretary Josh Earnest narrating President Obama’s very own weekly news magazine, “West Wing Week.”
Clinton, should she be elected, will make things worse because she will have many of the same advisers as Obama, will also have the support of the left-leaning press corps — and the economics of journalism aren’t going to get any better. Plus, the Clintons abhor the press — always have, always will.
Rhodes, a literary type who knew next to nothing about foreign policy before running it out of the West Wing, is often described as an “aspiring novelist.” But, in fact, he’s already there. As a White House spinner, he concocts fiction full-time and has an eager, built-in audience, generally known as the Washington press corps.
That is “news” today. Sorry to have to tell you.
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