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March 8, 2008

Samantha Power sidebar: U.S. journalists protect the powerful to preserve access? Yuck

The exchange between MSNBC's Tucker Carlson and The Scotsman's Gerri Peev, preserved on YouTube. It's also on MSNBC after you watch a 30-second commercial.

At Salon, Glenn Greenwald hits hard on MSNBC's Tucker Carlson, and extends it to NBC's Tim Russert, for playing PR flak for the powerful rather than reporter to the people (Tucker Carlson unintentionally reveals the role of the American press).

Tucker Carlson upbraided The Scotsman journalist Gerri Peev on his MSNBC TV show for publishing Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Power's quote about Hillary -- "She is a monster, too –- that is off the record –- she is stooping to anything."

(The AP photo at right is of Samantha Power receiving an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brown University, May 27, 2007.)

I kept coming back to his transcript of the primary source: The fascination with the trainwreck.

CARLSON: What -- she wanted it off the record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you're interviewing wants a quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn't you do that?

PEEV: Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? In the United Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle that's decided ahead of the interview. If a figure in public life.

CARLSON: Right.

PEEV: Someone who's ostensibly going to be an advisor to the man who could be the most powerful politician in the world, if she makes a comment and decides it's a bit too controversial and wants to withdraw it immediately after, unfortunately if the interview is on the record, it has to go ahead.

CARLSON: Right. Well, it's a little.

PEEV: I didn't set out in any way, shape.

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?

PEEV: If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren't doing a very good job of getting to the truth. Now I did not go out of my way in any way, shape or form to hurt Miss Power. I believe she's an intelligent and perfectly affable woman. In fact, she's -- she is incredibly intelligent so she -- who knows she may have known what she was doing.

She regretted it. She probably acted with integrity. It's not for me to decide one way or the other whether she did the right thing. But I did not go out and try to end her career.

We don't do interviews off the record. The reporter would end up with nothing substantial to quote, the story would not be complete and we wouldn't be telling readers what we know. You're on the record or no story. (People can talk on background, and suggest leads, but they won't be in the story.)

And we would have had to print Samatha Power's quote, out of respect for the integrity of journalism "without fear or favor."

As did Peev's editors: Scotsman editor: We are certain it was right to publish, an editorial today in The Scotsman, whch ends,

Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest. It was for others to judge whether the remarks were ill-judged or spoke of the inexperience in the Obama camp.

Here's how The Scotsman covered the aftermath: Obama aide quits over Scotsman interview

At the end of the story, "Commenting has been suspended due to repeated abuse of our terms and conditions."

Note: Power describes herself as "a working journalist" in her official faculty bio at Harvard: "From 1993 to 1996 she covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia as a reporter for the U.S. News and World Report, the Boston Globe, and The New Republic." She must have known immediately what would follow.

Related: The U.K. Spectator is covering the U.S. election in its Americano blog, where James Forstyth notes,

Personally, I suspect her resignation has as much to do with Power’s honest confession in a BBC interview that when it comes to Iraq Obama "will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator" as the monster comment. Power used to work in Obama’s Senate office and is at the heart of his campaign—the last time I saw her she was at the heart of celebrations at a bar in Des Moines after Obama’s crucial win in the Iowa caucuses—and I doubt she would have been thrown over board just for the monster comment. But the Iraq one is actually far more serious, as it reveals that all Obama’s talk of bringing all the troops home within 16 months is just meaningless politician talk.

But we all know (don't we?) that the message shaped to get elected may not be the actual response to future circumstances and events. Obstacles and unforeseen variables will shape what's possible. One could say that, as I just did, without lurching toward, "It's all mush."

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:19 PM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: trudy on March 8, 2008 6:13 PM