Both Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have written posts eviscerating me for contending that Bush-hatred, not anything else, drove skepticism among liberals about the terrorist threat warnings. They've both written good posts, really; lawyerly, passionate and persuasive, over the top, at times, but they've given me a lot to think about. (One post is better than the other, but I won't say which one.)
They haven't changed my mind, but they've certainly modified my conclusion. I didn't spend enough time thinking about what I wanted to say. Incidentally, if I am a symbol of everything that is wrong in journalism, then I suggest they are both giving me WAY too much credit.
I will say one thing about journalists collectively: we will never, ever change people's minds about the media except by practicing good journalism. So arguing -- and even apologizing -- is kind of useless and counterproductive.
I still think that some journalists were right to be skeptical of the doubters at the time. I think that some journalists were correct to question how they arrived at the beliefs they arrived at.
The evolving history of the Bush administration, we've come to learn, is complex. The White House was never the monolith that it once appeared to me. The story of how the White House revolted against Dick Cheney is only beginning to be told. Administration officials were more political in some areas than we had assumed, and less political in others, and their worldview was shaped by an all-consuming obsession about terrorism. The One Percent Doctrine.
Reading the excerpts from Tom Ridge's book, it is not clear to me that he is actually arguing against interest, or that he is correct. No doubt, Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft had very strong views about terrorism, but simply because Ridge -- who disagreed with Rumsfeld and Ashcroft about many, many things -- had a feeling that Rumsfeld was trying to tinker with an election's outcome does not, by a mile, prove anything.
What it establishes is that Ridge had the same suspicions as many liberals and libertarians. And Ridge, having access to most of the intelligence, had sound reasons to object. "Gut hatred" is way too strong a term -- it's the wrong term -- to describe why liberals doubted the fundamental capacity of the White House to be honest about anything. It was ideological and based on their intepretation of a pattern of facts that, in retrospect, seems much more reasonable than it did. The media's skepticism was warranted; our derision wasn't and mine isn't. Quite frankly, I don't think the triumphalism is any more attractive, either.
My hindsight bias is no less offensive than the bias I attribute to these liberals. It was wrong to use the phrase "gut hatred." Had I spent more time thinking about the post, I would have chosen a different phrase. And I should have.
Here's the way to put this into context: the political team at the White House had the honor of using policy to advance politics. That they did, in ways that were tough to handle -- scaring Americans into complacence, taking advantage of weak Democrats, comparing Max Cleland to Saddam Hussein, exploiting the national security divisions in this country for electoral gain. Though American politics has never been beanbag and it has never been nice, for political journalists, our not calling out Republicans on these tactics -- not calling them strikes, as they were definitely within the strike zone -- was our deepest failing.
Shorter Ambinder: I'm sorry for using the words "gut hatred", but nothing else - I'm never wrong.
Ambinder appears to be an amoral, venally sycophantic Republican hack whose journalistic abilities are limited to the rephrasing of the talking points he is fed. The Bush administration was driven entirely by self-interest, and it deployed an army of 'journalists' like Ambinder (or, say, Jeff Gannon...) to push its agenda. Real investigative journalism is hard to find. To his credit, Glen Greenwald has dared to challenge the assertions of both the Bush AND the Obama teams. As of now, Obama seems nearly as driven by self-serving political calculus as Bush! All politicians lie for political gain but only a few journalists are both smart and independent enough to call them on it. GREENWALD FTW.
Ambinder appears to be an amoral, venally sycophantic Republican hack whose journalistic abilities are limited to the rephrasing of the talking points he is fed. The Bush administration was driven entirely by self-interest, and it deployed an army of 'journalists' like Ambinder (or, say, Jeff Gannon...) to push its agenda. Real investigative journalism is hard to find. To his credit, Glen Greenwald has dared to challenge the assertions of both the Bush AND the Obama teams. As of now, Obama seems nearly as driven by self-serving political calculus as Bush! All politicians lie for political gain but only a few journalists are both smart and independent enough to call them on it. GREENWALD FTW.
"I will say one thing about journalists collectively: we will never, ever change people's minds about the media except by practicing good journalism. So arguing -- and even apologizing -- is kind of useless and counterproductive."
Ambinder implies here that arguing against another journalist's mistaken story, as well as apologizing when one's own story is mistaken, is bad journalism. This is false and disgraceful.
Argumentation and apology (when appropriate) inspire trust. Those activities represent responsiveness to good reasons, as opposed to ideology.
Wow, I don't usually comment on the internet, in fact I had to create an account just to attack a journalist I had considered 'one of the good ones.' I guess I wasn't paying enough attention.
Marc: when you are caught this shame-facedly red-handed the only option is contrition.
You say: "I will say one thing about journalists collectively: we will never, ever change people's minds about the media except by practicing good journalism." I aint holding my breath.
wheeler and greenwald are not giving you WAY too much credit: they said you are a SYMBOL of everything that is wrong in journalism, not the CAUSE.
and they are right.
kool-aid will never go out of business as long as you still have a column.
"The evolving history of the Bush Administration is, we've come to learn, is complex. The White House was never the monolith that it once appeared to me. The story of how the White House revolted against Dick Cheney is only beginning to be told."
the reason it is all just starting to be told is because coopted clowns such as yourself failed -- often refused!! -- to ask the right questions and look into suspicions, as journalists are supposed to do!
otherwise you are just a stenographer. which sounds about right in this case.
And you are the dude who is reading the stenographer.
I think Ambinder apologizes here, more than once, and I think he's right to do so. I like apologies with context; they make the mea culpa more sincere. Don't let your bile blind you to that.
And what, exactly, is Ambinder apologizing for? He's apologizing for saying that Greenwald, Wheeler, Josh Marshall, and everyone else who thought these things were politically motivated were driven by "gut hatred".
In other words, he's apologizing for calling other media personalities bad names. I think I can speak for Greenwald, Wheeler, et. al, when I say that they don't care about being called names.
What Ambinder is NOT apologizing for is his willingness to accept questionable Bush Administration policies at face value, and his willingness to broadly criticize journalists who did not accept Bush Administration policies at face value. This is what he's really being criticized for, and that he still doesn't seem to acknowledge how profoundly unprofessional this was is the real problem.
In fact, Ambinder continues to take an arrogant and derisive attitude towards the journalists who actually got the story right, with his "I don't think the triumphalism is any more attractive" dig. Again, he's insulting them, and again, he's missing the point.
The point is, Ambinder didn't do his job. If he apologized for THAT, I would be happy.
Is this a Mea Culpa? Or are you saying, "I was right all along. I am just sorry got caught using hateful language"?
You're so vain, you probably think Stephen Colbert's monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner was about you.
The phrase 'gut hatred' wasn't the problem. It that you trust the powerful and assume everyone problems with the powerful is rooted in hatred.
Why do you trust politicians to tell you the truth? So far I've never seen you question spin.
Wheeler and Greenwald are right.
Exactly right. He apparently can't even comprehend what's wrong with his position in this regard.
Duncan Black today has the best insight I've seen on why stenographers like Ambinder continue to so annoy the DFH community:
Although I think you deserve credit for your willingness to reconsider your words, I think you still have more work to do in understanding how you and those who disagreed with you reached different conclusions based on the same evidence.
I grant that it's just as important to look at the process that people use to arrive at conclusions as it is to judge the conclusions themselves. However, in this case, it's paramount to recognize that those who were more suspicious of the Bush administration were right to do so, while those who gave the administration the benefit of the doubt were -- in far too many cases -- wrong to do so. This isn't the "triumphalism" that you find so unattractive. Rather, it's an honest accounting of differences in judgment during a crucial time in our recent history.
It's not sufficient for you to explain this disparity by saying that nobody was privy to the evidence, so it came down to whether one reacted to the information asymmetry by being suspicious of the government or giving them the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, if journalists reflexively give the government the benefit of the doubt, then who can the public rely on to determine whether the government is being deceptive? And for another, as you recognize, there was indeed a "pattern of facts" that led people to -- correctly -- doubt the government. To you, their interpretation of that pattern appears reasonable in hindsight, but others drew immediate conclusions from that pattern, and hindsight has proven them correct.
I don't think you really disagree with the point I'm trying to make here, which is that catching government lies is too important to do merely through hindsight. If your contemporaries are making judgments that are superior to yours, then it behooves you to understand how they arrive at those judgments, rather than trying to justify why your own thought processes are sound even when they lead you to unsound conclusions.
So kudos for recognizing that the political media's greatest failing was in not exposing the Bush administration's ruthless partisanship and repeated deceptions. I just think a bit more reflection is necessary in order to demonstrate that you're not likely to fail the same way again.
Nadav, Kol hakavod!!!
Toda Raba!
Brilliantly written.
Not quite.
"...catching government lies is too important to do merely through hindsight. "
He didn't catch the government lie. He was caught flat-footed when Tom Ridge--because he seeks controversy to publicize his new book--revealed the truth.
Once it's "hindsight," it's history. The lies are faits accomplis and the damage is done. Besides, could his wording have been any more weasel-like?
"They haven't changed my mind, but they've certainly modified my conclusion."
Do tell.
Why does this person have a column in the Atlantic? Seriously.
Seriously, they haven't changed your mind?
At what point do these lapdog, establishment-worshipping stenographers wake up and realize their failure and culpability in the numerous and widespread crimes of the Bush years? All we get is lame excuse after lame excuse. It's embarrassing.
I'm tired of constantly being ridiculed and dismissed by these incompetent hacks, when we have consistently proven to be much better government watch-dogs than them for decades. Enough already. Go back to journalism school.
I am just as appalled by your followup above as I was by your original article. As I read it, I could not help picturing in my mind an earthworm turning and turning in its self-slimed ground.
This is apologia is completely unbelievable.
That you continue to defend your errors is appalling. You "still think some journalists [who include you, and who were wrong] were right?" Well, throw yourself a parade. The question isn't whether you think you were right. The question is why a reader should trust your judgment or your reporting.
Which of your critics you think wrote a better takedown of you is beside the point. Ludicrously so. You aren't really in a position to be handing out critiques right now.
This apologia is completely unbelievable.
That you continue to defend your errors is appalling. You "still think some journalists [who include you, and who were wrong] were right?" Well, throw yourself a parade. The question isn't whether you think you were right. The question is why a reader should trust your judgment or your reporting.
Which of your critics you think wrote a better takedown of you is beside the point. Ludicrously so. You aren't really in a position to be handing out critiques right now.
Ambinder, you turd, do you really think your choice of words is the extent of the problem? You are an embarrassment to your alma mater. This is why everyone hates you.
Mr. Ambinder states, "Administration officials were more political in some areas than we had assumed, and less political in others..."
Well, I can't think of a single instance where the Bush Administration was LESS political than I assumed. Can you, Mr. Ambinder?
Remember, this was the gang that even got the Department of Agriculture(!) on board to promote the Iraq war.
This was the gang that outed a CIA agent just to get back at her husband for writing an article that contained facts that embarrassed the President.
This is the gang that fired US Attorneys if they did not prosecute enough Democrats, or were too aggressive in prosecuting Republicans.
Perhaps your attempt to backpedal your previous outrageous comments should meet with some credit, but when your new comments contain such weaseling as to claim that there were instances where the Bush Administration was less political than we thought, then your attempt at an apology falls flat.
"I will say one thing about journalists collectively: we will never, ever change people's minds about the media except by practicing good journalism. So arguing -- and even apologizing -- is kind of useless and counterproductive."
That is ridiculous. What is this bullshit? You, as a journalist, should always strive to be much MUCH more transparent, skeptical and self-reflective every day.
It really seems to strain you to say you and your fellow journalists failed, but you should be honest with yourself and your readers. Own up to your shortcomings, but not as defensively as you did here.
Thanks for your apology, but you have a long way to go to realize how damaging your attitude is, and those of your fellow stenographers who somehow think govermnment leaders and politicians can be trusted.
Rule #1: if your mother says she loves you, check it out!
Your job as a journalist is to protect the public from liars (name anyone in the Bush administration). Don't waste time trying to figure out if Bush critics are "gut haters" or "good Americans" or "patriots" or any of the other slime that is thrown at them by the insane right.
Please, Please, Please!!! help us. Get a spine, stand up to power, be skeptical of politicians (yes, Obama, too).
Sincerely,
A fellow journalist.
M.A., you truly are beyond repair. Your moral compass is so grossly twisted you don't even realize the main point of Glenn's article about you. "Gut hatred" was dumb enough, granted; as if you can divine the motives of millions of people who disagreed with Bush.
Glenn's larger point is journalism is a joke inside the Beltway. Your version of journalism (giving government the benefit of some doubt) is exactly the opposite of what most people think your job is (the 4th estate and all that quaint stuff). Sadly, we all now see how the dance is danced. You pretend to be a journalist and politicians pretend to be held accountable. Journalists' willingness to give the government that benefit of the doubt is precisely why we're in Iraq for no reason, why we have a government that illegally spied (and still spies) on citizens, why Cheney got away with outing Valerie Plame, why Bush never paid a price for Katrina...the list goes on.
Another point is, in any profession, it's usually a deep humiliation when you are exposed as such a hack. It usually makes the hack at least cringe enough that he apologizes and promises to be more professional. But, not you. Not you and not people like Robert Novak or Bill Kristol or dozens of other "journalists" who've been proved flat WRONG about major issues. Dead wrong were you and they, yet no REAL apology. No real soul searching. Just another lame mea culpa that says nothing. The "journalism profession" is now so sick and twisted that it rewards the likes of you and other sycophantic stenographers who do the bidding of the "trustworthy" government. No critical analysis. No fact checking. Just regurgitating talking points as if the only role of a reporter is to repeat what both sides say, then go home.
I pine for the days when David Halberstam reported the TRUTH about Vietnam, regardless of how it played with the powers running that war. I miss the likes of Daniel Ellsberg who rose above kissing the ass of power, and instead helped end the Vietnam war and expose the Nixon Administration's treachery. But, don't you worry your little head about it. When your paycheck rolls in, that's all you need to know to convince you that you must be doing something right. Ha!
I've now read your post three times and I confess I'm struggling to follow it. "They haven't changed my mind, but they've certainly modified my conclusion." What does that mean?
"Administration officials were more political in some areas than we had assumed, and less political in others." In WHICH areas has it turned out that they were less political than mainstream reporters like you believed at the time?
"The media's skepticism was warranted; our derision wasn't and mine isn't. Quite frankly, I don't think the triumphalism is any more attractive, either." Your derision of those who pointed out the Bush administration's behavior had real consequences. Those consequences are to be found in many, many places, not least Arlington National Cemetery. The only consequences of Greenwald's triumphalism are that maybe, just maybe, it'll improve your performance in the future.
"For political journalists, our not calling out Republicans on these tactics -- not calling them strikes, as they were definitely within the strike zone -- was our deepest failing." What steps have you taken to reevaluate the way you approach your craft, based on the lessons of this experience?
You're 100% right about one thing: "We will never, ever change people's minds about the media except by practicing good journalism." The tragedy is: you may not change people's minds even then. There are too many closed minds everywhere you look, on all sides. But you'll never know until you try.
Ambinder deserves credit for admitting his mistake.
Are you serious? He didn't apologize for what he did. He gave a half baked apology for something he wasn't even called out for. I used to do that when I was like, five.
I think you are overreacting. Look, you're not a journalist; you're a corporate sham-wow guy. We get it. You get paid a bunch of money to make a pitch for "the man". You're not the only one who has to work for a living you know. Everyone is someone's "bitch".
Is this intended satirically? I love the way you wheel out the "the man", even if he is accompanied by a bodyguard of quotation marks.
Ian, are you seriously saying that Ambinder is not, in fact, the bitch of the Bush Administration? Has he shown some independence from them that has managed to escape me?
Thought not.
"But that is how our political culture works. Throughout the Bush years, those who said demonstrably true things were continuously dismissed as fringe, conspiracy-driven leftist-losers" - Glenn Greenwald
I think the problem represented by journalist such as Marc Ambinder is more pernicious than his weak-tea apology represents. All throughout Republican administrations, criticisms or negative observations of the government by liberals or progressives is always dismissed out of hand as crazy left-wing ruminations. And when they turn out to be spot-on, the MSM reverts to the old Ambinder standard that it’s all brought on by hatred, all the while conveniently ignoring the preceding analysis upon which the conclusions are based. I guess being a journalist means never having to honestly say you were wrong.
Now that we have a Democratic administration, Ambinder and his ilk have shifted into a sort-of antimatter, Bizarro version of themselves. Now, any crazy, right-wing conspiratory nonsense that's easily disproven is treated like legitimate news or commentary.
"I still think that some journalists were right to be skeptical of the doubters at the time. I think that some journalists were correct to question how they arrived at the beliefs they arrived at."
Editors and columnists can be as skeptical as they wish. A true journalist, it seems to me, would investigate such accusations before rendering an opinion. In a matter of speaking, it was not Mr. Dean's job to dig for the evidence or lack thereof; it was yours. Or, rather, a journalist's.
Mr. Ambinder,
The vehemence of the response to your slice of "truth telling" should indicate just how far from normal discourse we are in this country. You cannot challenge the orthodoxy without being subjected to fist-shaking and finger-wagging. Simply saying, "here's why I disagree" is impossible. There is a vacuum here, and then, all of a sudden, you popped up on the whack-a-mole table. Hope your headache goes away.
Liberals are decrying full-throated, yelling thugs at health care rallies (town hall meetings?); scour their blogs and their own history of applauding the disruption Congressional hearings or speeches during the Bush years, and you get the deer in the headlights look when you point out the hypocrisy. Ask Ted Rall how he feels about being one of the first to call out President Obama.
What happened to the notion that "the adults were going to come in and run things" now that Bush had been chased out of town? There are many liberals who are still in shock that the air was not filled with fluttering pardons and teargas. President Obama has continued so many different Bush policies, it's impossible to list them all. I've yet to see anyone, save Greenwald and Rall, get their head around that, either.
When you say:
"The evolving history of the Bush administration, we've come to learn, is complex. The White House was never the monolith that it once appeared to me. The story of how the White House revolted against Dick Cheney is only beginning to be told. Administration officials were more political in some areas than we had assumed, and less political in others, and their worldview was shaped by an all-consuming obsession about terrorism. The One Percent Doctrine."
I'm still waiting for an apology from Sy Hersh for telling us Dick Cheney was going to bomb Iran.
I do believe every single liberal blog I visit is doing just that, we are all doing whatever it takes holding obama's feet to the fire and we think if he ran as a republican with the decisions he's made so far he would have won the republican nomination
he is not the man we thought we voted for, has not made the decisions he was voted for and has sought to consolidate even more executive power then bush
yes, there are liberals that want obama impeached, myself I would like him impeached even more then I wanted bush impeached, for all the power bush consolidated obama tries to consolidate more
very few liberals are happy one bit with obama
I am mystified at what journalism has come to since I was in J-school 40 years ago. We were taught NOT to trust authority, and to question motives. It didn't mean that mayors or presidents were automatically wrong, but that they weren't automatically right, either. They didn't get a "benefit of the doubt".
It was said in the sixties that the biggest divide between us and our parents (the now-called greatest generation) was that their instinct was to trust the government unless it could be proved wrong, and our instinct, after the VietNam war and Watergate, was to distrust the government unless it could be proved right. That's what we grew up with.
I still retain that skepticism. My "gut hatred" of Bush arose because of his incompetence and his un-American espousal of pre-emptive war, torture, and even not allowing dissenters into his supposed public meetings. In other words, he EARNED my gut-hatred day by day for seven long years (leaving off the first year, when I did not yet hate him).
Obama is not earning (so far) the gut-hatred he is getting. It's based on exaggerations and distortions, not actual actions or policy.
Oh, and Norman Rogers, you think Dick Cheney did not WANT to bomb Iran? I think it's pretty clear from a number of sources besides Sy Hersh that he DID want to. I think that's another belligerent bullet we dodged, possibly because Bush was beginning to listen to others besides Cheney. I'll bet in Cheney's book he admits that he wanted to either bomb Iran or support the Israelis in doing so.
Thank you for pointing out that President Bush did a good job of keeping this country safe from the supposed predations of Vice President Cheney. Like you, I think President Bush got a raw deal from liberals. Like you, I believe that every day of the Obama Administration vindicates Bush in ways that we are not prepared to admit.
Of course, simply saying, "wow, Sy Hersh blew that one" would never occur to anyone. By the end of the Bush years, Hersh was doing whatever he could to keep himself on television. I'm confused, though--was he practicing journalism? Shouldn't some of what he had to say have been accurate? I'm missing the part where he nailed it.
Journalists who muff it, well, as long as they meant well, let's give them a pass, shall we?
When you say "like you" (referring to me), apparently you mean "not like you". Unlike you, I do not believe Bush got a raw deal from liberals, or that the Obama administration is vindicating Bush, or that Sy Hersh blew that one. So what are you perceiving as our points of agreement?
"Journalists who muff it, as long as they meant well...." What about Presidents who muff it, as long as they meant well? I am not giving Bush a pass for the many ways he "muffed it", and apparently you are not giving Obama a pass, either.
Journalists SHOULD be important in a Democracy, because sometimes only they can find out the truth. In my view, Sy Hersh was an important contributor to finding out the truth, and apparently he was not in your view.
Marc,
Thank you for the apology. Well done. One quibble, however....
The "triumphalism" that you refer to is not only justified, but it's essential to the understanding of why so many of us out here in blogistan are so pissed off and determined to overturn the dominant corporate media culture. We're not interested in a juvenile celebration of "we were right, and you guys were wrong." But there is a default set of assumptions held by many of our mainstream journalists that lead them to defer to established authority and give it the benefit of the doubt no matter how much evidence points to the fact that the authorities are often wrong and the skeptical dirty hippies are often right.
In the present media culture, a government or corporate spokesperson enjoys a presumption of legitimacy and a measure of respect, even when they are spewing utter bullshit and lies. A smart and perceptive blogger still has to fight to be regarded as a valid participant in the political conversation. Citizen journalism is at the margins, even though we have been right more often than not about the malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence in our government and the corporations.
It is worth noting that the financial services CEO's who nearly destroyed this country still have their jobs and are still being compensated at obscene levels. In any just and rational world, those assholes would be banished and forced to share an island with lepers and venomous reptiles. The same dynamic exists in our media culture; mainstream pundits who have been catastrophically wrong on nearly every issue for years on end are still employed and are still players in the political landscape. They have paid no price for their folly, yet bloggers and citizen journalists are easily dismissed as lightweights who are driven only by "gut hatred." The reason your post has generated such a fervent response is that you demonstrated the typical condescension faced by citizen journalists in their fight to provide a counterweight to the corrupt and arrogant corporate press.
Well, it sure looks like you've got some people pretty mad at you, son.
Marc, again, you're just wrong. Look at this sentence where you [mis]characterize both your and the critics of the Bush administration:
"It was ideological and based on their intepretation [bad spelling for you] of a pattern of facts that, in retrospect, seems much more reasonable than it did."
Marc, give me a call if you want to discuss. You have my number. But it wasn't ideological. It was empirical. You, dummy.
Don't sell yourself short, Mr. Ambinder. You are TOO a symbol of everything wrong with journalism.
Do you have even the smallest glimmer of understanding of the role of a free press in a democratic society? That by having a public voice that others do not, you are entrusted to speak truth to power, and to be skeptical of the government? That the "benefit of the doubt" belongs to The People, not to the government?
You're a lobbyist, not a journalist.
Let's summarise shall we?
1. Hippies (like Howard Dean) accuse Bush administration of manipulating terror alerts.
2. Ambinder chooses to believe Bush admin and be skeptical of hippies.
3. Ridge (who kinda knows the truth), proves hippies correct.
4. Ambinder says trusting Bush was the right thing to do (even if the trust was misplaced), since the hippies were all just haters.
5. Greenwald and Wheeler point out that trusting Bush is not really in the job description for journalists.
6. Ambinder apologises for calling hippies haters, but ignores the whole trusting Bush thing (ie, the point) and condescends to judge the relative quality of Greenwald's and Wheeler's journalism.
Hats off to Marc everyone! It takes real talent to deliver so much stupid, so cluelessly. Anyone would think this was the McArdle page.
"I still think that some journalists were right to be skeptical of the doubters at the time. I think that some journalists were correct to question how they arrived at the beliefs they arrived at."
Did it not occur to you to apply at least some of that same skepticism to the believers?
Not even once?
I'll believe that the media is serious about cleaning up its act when there are serious personal consequences for bad behavior. We know that a reporter can lose his reputation and his job if he fakes a source or engages in plagiarism. People like you, however, whose malpractice costs lives and endangers our form of government keep their jobs and perks and go gaily on your way.
We don't want apologies. We want you and your kind replaced by people who, whether coming from the left or the right, actually have some integrity.
I've always thought there are two defining features of Marc's work. First, and most important, he's a truly excellent reporter: well-connected, assiduous, judicious, can always be relied on for an original take or an insight nobody else has. Second, he can't write. His posts are convoluted, confusing things, and you really have to work hard to wring the sense out of them. Luckily, it's usually worth the effort. But I think a large part of the argument these last posts have sparked is to do with people reading different things into Marc's post than the things he wanted to convey. In my humble and uninformed opinion, he badly needs an editor, or better, he needs to admit to himself this is a problem and take a writing class.
Is it bad writing, or does a statment like
the political team at the White House had the honor of using policy to advance politics.
indicate a cognitive disorder?
It's bad writing. Very bad.
This goes way beyond bad writing. He's a lazy journalist, more of a stenographer, and I think you know it.
The man simply refuses to use his position to ask the hard questions. He summed up his philosophy perfectly when he claimed that journalists will always tend to give the government the benefit of the doubt.
Walter Conkrite is rolling over in his grave.
What's interesting is how the author writes:
"Incidentally, if I am a symbol of everything that is wrong in journalism, then I suggest they are both giving me WAY too much credit."
In writing this, he seems to either misunderstand what "symbol" means, or is being purposely obtuse. It doesn't mean spokesperson or leader or have anything to do with importance or prominence, in fact. What Greenwald actually wrote was Ambinders column "helps explain", along with others, what's wrong with so much of our political and media discourse. And it does.
I also found the notion that the Bush administration "had the honor of using policy to influence politics" to be an appallingly lighthearted way of putting it.
Depending on what Tom Ridge's rather astounding admission leads to being uncovered, what the Bush White House did may very well have been illegal.
It was certainly immoral beyond belief, giving credence to those of us who saw that the entire "war on terror" was a cheap political ploy, a la the novel 1984, that was using the actual lives of American soldiers as a political ploy to keep one party in power.
It's far, far more serious than even your apology is implying. And you were definitely part of the culture that allowed them to use you in these immoral and probably illegal ways.
You didn't just write something imprecise this week, you let the Republicans use you, for years.
Marc -
I don't mean this as nasty as it sounds, but I think you're in the wrong biz. If you're not immediately and inherently skeptical of the pronouncements of those in power you should be doing something else, like maybe corporate public relations, otherwise you're going to find yourself apologizing a lot more in the future. What was wrong with your analysis wasn't the facts, it was your entire worldview.
I honestly cannot believe that someone who knows at all the post-WW2 history of this country, or in fact any political history whatsoever, could possibly have written what you did in your initial post.
In fact, it's frankly kind of horrifying given that you're considered a political consultant to a number of outlets. Are you at all familiar with, for instance, The Pentagon Papers, or the Iran/Contra Report, or The 9/11 Report? What exactly do they teach you guys in Poli Sci @ Harvard?
"Incidentally, if I am a symbol of everything that is wrong in journalism, then I suggest they are both giving me WAY too much credit."
I don't believe anyone said you were everything that is wrong in journalism, which would admittedly be a tall order. They said you were a SYMBOL of everything that is wrong in journalism. Which just means you have to embody the appropriate traits pretty well.
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." -- Thomas Jefferson
That statement suggests a pretty high level of responsibility and civic duty for journalists, in the sense the founders intended. Generally speaking, the media's response to the Bush administration's post-911 behavior was not skeptical, thorough, or brave. Therefore I'm not sure they are what Jefferson meant.
"The U.S. media today is frequently known as the Fourth Estate, an appellation that suggests the press shares equal stature with the other branches of government created by the Constitution. The press, or 'Fourth Estate' plays a vital role as a guardian of U.S. democracy." http://usa.usembassy.de/media.htm
Equal stature with the other branches of government? That "co-equal" stature isn't written into the Constitution. It's earned every day through a sense of duty and appropriate action. Jefferson assumed that sense of duty would exist, but I'm not so sure it's felt passionately in big media today.
The former journalists commenting here - and Greenwald, as well - are propogating a falsehood about how skepticism works in the industry. Skepticism in journalism is a process, not a stand you take. You don't set out to prove wrongness - you evaluate rightness based on the information you have, and the information you can get. And sometimes that evaluation goes too slow - or is clouded by the very human tendency to be equally skeptical of the seemingly extreme on either side of a debate. That's what Ambinder is talking about when he uses the term "gut hatred" - a bad characterization, for sure, but one that provides some insight into the judgments journalists make when they begin to evaluate information.
So yes, it's very easy to scream here because you were right about Bush/Cheney on A, B, or C. But it's a whole lot easier being right at home than it is to come to that same journalistic conclusion. All of which does not exclude journalists from being so slow in coming to the correct conclusion - we most definitely were. But it's not nearly as simple as saying we weren't skeptical enough - or we were too cowardly or incompetent to pursue it. I think that's Ambinder's larger point here - that so much goes into the sift.
ccmoo, If it's hard to figure out the truth and journalists were just slow, fine. Explain what the evidence was and how it led to the conclusion it did. That should stand for itself. But don't excuse your slowness by impugning the motives of those on one side of the debate, especially if they turned out to be right.
Why do I say "especially if they turned out to be right"? Because sometimes, citizens who are usually quiet and mind their own business become really mad when they perceive a politician to be cravenly manipulating the public using national security. There's actually a cause-effect there.
If they turned out to be right, one should reexamine the possibility that the anger was based on fact, rather than predisposition, and reconsider one's prior evaluation of the evidence accordingly.
The problem is - we hear from the citizens who aren't quiet, and we hear from them often. If you work in a newsroom for any stretch of time, you face a large quantity of conspiracists who believe we'd find nefarious gov't agendas if ...we ... just ... looked ... hard ... enough. (The current national screamer meme: Obama wants a single-payer/gov't-only/illegal immigrant covering/abortion providing health care - and all his proposals are designed to ultimately take us there.)
So, by human nature and necessity, we sift through these claims by wondering about motives behind them. Like I said, it's part of the skeptical process.
You're correct, lupe. The anger turned out to be right in this case, and Ambinder (I believe) acknowledges that. His point is that often it isn't, and that slows skepticism.
But we're talking about listening to smart people with suits and ties and phds and jds and who are sane and actually know stuff about policy. Of COURSE you have to block out the crazies, I can't imagine it makes your job that impossible, separating the absolutely crazy from the plausible.
Well, what are journalists supposed to do if not evaluate these claims, judge them for truth and relevance, and then report accordingly? The problem is that journalists like Ambinder habitually abdicate this responsibility, and end up broadcasting nonsense with no cues to alert casual readers to the independently-derived conclusion that it is, in fact, nonsense.
What makes Ambinder so contemptible is the suggestion (also in the last few lines of your comment) that skepticism, whether directed at those in power or at the "screamers," should be anything but a journalist's default position.
tl;dr -- Skepticism of screamers shouldn't, in responsible journalism, preclude skepticism of the screamers' targets as well. But Ambinder has a long history of being a credulous tool of one side, while dismissing outright the claims of the other. This is not skepticism; this is just dumb fuckery.
It's much more than this isolated case where, maybe you're correct, most journalists were simply too slow in connecting the dots and there was no unethical deference to the establishment. I might be able to swallow that, if nearly every major journalist hadn't followed that same code of conduct regardless of the particular story or how much/little evidence there was to support it.
So there weren't enough hard facts to prove the administration was using its coded alert system to manipulate voters (though Ridge's 2005 statement might have been a clue). How about the Abu Ghraib photos? Or unsubstantiated evidence that justified a war? Or selective firing of federal lawyers? There was enough evidence in those cases to think twice about giving Bush/Cheney the "benefit of some doubt".
Sure, rolling your eyes at the guy ranting about government listening devices in his Cheerios is "part of the skeptical process", but the other part is doing your damn job and strenuously investigating and publishing claims against government officials, regardless of how privileged and awed you may feel to have access to them.
Shorter Marc Ambinder: I was right to be wrong, and you were wrong to be right.
Tool.
Here's what gets me: This clown writes...
"Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit."
... yet he (and others of his ilk) are only too happy to tweeze apart any intelligence emanating from the Obama White House one syllable at a time, freely distorting anything they find at will. It's oblivious, blinkered hypocrisy on a level I don't think I've ever seen before. Whatever it is, it certainly isn't journalism. These idiots talk about The Bush Administration the way tweens talk about the stars of "High School Musical."
Here's why people in power should always be treated with skepticism. They may start out with good intentions, but somewhere along the line they realize it is necessary to STAY in power in order to carry out those good intentions. This leads to the slippery slope whereby in some cases staying in power takes precedence over the original good intentions, or it is necessary to keep the bad guys out of power.
I'm being charitable here and assuming that there ever WERE good intentions, but this is how Karl Rove comes to be a power at the White House and how the decision is made that upping the terror level before the election might help the re-election effort. Those are examples from the Bush administration, but you can look at government at any level and find some of the same dynamics. Gov. Rod Blagojevich, here in Illinois, had great intentions, but in order to stay in power he believed he had to establish one of the most corrupt pay-to-play schemes you've ever seen. To this day he thinks he was justified.
So that's why journalists should always be skeptical of those in power and those seeking power.
And one more thing: What's wrong with "gut hatred" when the object of it deserves it? Or does Ambinder contend that no one does, or that a president couldn't, or that Bush in particular doesn't?
Here is my sealed prediction: However bad we on the left thought it was in the Bush White House--however corrupted by ideology, by dumb-bell piety, by Rovian politicization of literally everything, from the Supreme Court to the U.S. Attorney's office to the stocking of the gift shop at the Grand Canyon, by know-nothing-ism, anti-intellectualism, mendacity, stupidity, and sheer blundering ineptitude--the memoirs and investigations of the next ten years will show that we didn't know the half of it.
I knew--and I'm hardly Mr. Insight--that Bush was completely and entirely full of shit as soon as I saw him campaign in 2000. And then came the GOP riots at the Florida polls, the corruption (for a generation) of the Supreme Court, and the stage-managed, endlessly lying campaign to invade Iraq. Nothing I ever thought about Bush has been proven anything but true.
Sometimes "gut hatred" is the intelligent, correct response.
Marc, I read yesterday the comments from your original article on this matter and I had sympathy for you that you were brutalized even after you posted your apology for the post
however this piece you just wrote demonstrates, you just don't get it and I really think after reading this you never will...to wit;
you are still believing what has been demonstrated to be false, they had no obsession about terrorism they created obsession among the rest of us as their tool controlling us
THAT is the very point
IF they had an obsession concerning terrorism they would have NEVER attacked Iraq, they would have NEVER diverted the assets desperately needed in Afghanistan to attack Iraq which THEY KNEW AS A FACT was not involved, which THEY KNEW AS A FACT had NO weapons of mass destruction and which they knew as a fact posed NO threat
THEIR intelligence told them their claims were lies
GET IT?
the had NO "obsession" with terrorism accept for their obsession with power and how exploiting terrorism would facilitate their obsession
STOP giving them ANY "benefit of doubt", there IS no doubt, they used terrorism as their tool to attack a country they've wanted to attack since they fantasized about it as members in a SICK and MANIACAL fraternity known as the PNAC.
now, if you are going to give us a mia culpa, be so kind as to STOP giving the previous (or present for that matter) administration ANY "benefit of doubt", your JOB as a journalist IS to doubt
get it yet?
"Though American politics has never been beanbag and it has never been nice, for political journalists, our not calling out Republicans on these tactics -- not calling them strikes, as they were definitely within the strike zone -- was our deepest failing."
Actually, no. That wasn't your (collective) biggest failing as journalists.
Your biggest failing was you're consistently not fact-checking. There was so much that was said that *I*, simply googling when I read something and finding primary sources, was able to verify was not true - nor even within reasonable reach of being true. I wish to heavens name I had been reading McClatchey at the time - certainly it would have helped with my "Am I crazy, or is it the entire rest of the world?" moments, but looking back, they were doing the same basic checks I was, that weren't being done by almost the entire rest of the media.
If that had been done - if the Bush administration hadn't gotten so very used to having everything taken as gospel regardless of simple checks, most of the rest of this would have been avoided.
That's why people are furious. By the time we got to things like 'Terror Alert Levels', anyone that had actually fact checked the obvious things the administration had lied about, was simply not willing to assume they were honest about things that couldn't be checked.
But you kept printing them as gospel and even now, years later, are acting as if there's just no sane reason anyone would indulge in paranoid fantasies. After awhile one simply get frustrated as hell for not being taken seriously.
If the crazy people all turn out to be right, at some point it's insane to keep calling them the crazy people.
Jonnan
Marc Ambinder,
Don't worry about your critics who insist that the ones who consistently get it right are constantly marginalized by insiders like yourself.
It's all just some stuff that happened.
You will always be serious to me, no matter what. People like us must ignore those leftie nay sayers and do gooders.
Just keep doin that voodoo that you do so well.
A long time fan that thinks you are above the petty leftie criticism from the likes of Dr. Krugman and expat American Glenn Greenwald. (honestly, where do they get off any way?)
Just keep being serious.
TRUTH TO POWER!!
"most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt"
No Marc. That is wrong. And when you crap all over the DFHs on top of it, you transform from merely another uselessness journalist to a propagandizing thug.
I fear you simply don't get it.
Mr Ambinder, what you should be apologizing for is your refusal to report the truth and to investigate and search for the truth throughout the Bush administration, rather than relying on your own gut hatred of liberals, and thus denigrating liberals and playing the lapdog for Bush rather than reporting the truth. Your job is to search for and report the truth. PERIOD.
Mr. Armbinder,
Your mea sorta culpa was remarkably unconvincing and unmoving. You were either lazy or you onsciously chose to ignore the mountain of evidence that the Bush administration lied about nearly every subject. You chose to merely act as a Bush stenographer instead of exercising a healthy sense of journalistic skepticism. Your motivation might have been out of fear, a misguided sense of patriotism, or simply professional lethargy, I don't know, but I do know that you failed to do your job.
True, you were not alone. That does not absolve you or your peers. The "they did it too" defense rarely is very compelling. And yet, you still seem to feel the need to take a swipe at the liberals who had the audacity to be right when you were very, very wrong. I grew tired of being called irrational because of my well founded outrage over the Cheney/Bush lies, misdeeds, assaults on the Constitution, and as we now know, felonies. Yet, somehow the fault is all our own and not yours.
It was not an all consuming sense of hatred of Bush that motivated me, but a love of country and of the Constitution. I adhere to that quaint notion that lies from presidents should be challenged by the press. I also believed that our sacred duty to our troops requires that we send them to war only when absolutely necessary and not for the political recreation of fools in power. As it turns out, I was right to fear the worst from the Bush administration. I, and many others, could easily perceive what you apparently could not, or would not.
You - and many of your peers in MSM - bear no small share of culpability for a needless war, a tattered Constitution, and a government that was teetering on the brink of Fascist dictatorship for seven years. I would have thought a bit more humility and less bombastic apologia would have been in order.
But, hey, I'm just a liberal.
I agree with most of the comments and particularly want to emphasize the disconcerting shallowness of both Ambinder's beliefs and his "apology." At a moment when the media are getting skewered, deservedly, for their unwillingness to speak truth to power, Marc Ambinder still doesn't get it. Forget about blaming liberals. Ambinder, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out last February, defended the Obama administration when it continued many of Bush's secretive, corrupt policies. The problem here is intellectual dishonesty and -- it needs to be emphasized because it's so out of place in Atlantic -- awful shallowness.
Ambinder has never been anything more than a simple scrivner for the Right. His claim to being a journalist is just another deception. Given the evidence in support of this contention that's amassed over the years, it is a bit stunning to see him still in print in The Atlantic.
"(One post is better than the other, but I won't say which one.)"
Childish to the end. Well done. Now go pout in the corner and blame everyone for being mean to you.
Marc - don't apologize. Just go into a line of work more suited to your temperament. Cult apologist. Corporate flack. Lobbyist. Drug Rep. Used Car Salesman. Dope Dealer. Attorney.
Actually, anything other than journalist, or even would-be journalist.
People here keep excoriating Armbinder for not doing his job. What they fail to realize is that he is doing his job. His job is to be a stenographer for right-wingers and to pretend that he isn't. That's what "a political reporter" is and does, these days. It's why all of the insults in the world won't change any minds; Armbinder knows that the hand that signs his paychecks is the same hand that signs McArdle's, and he's not stupid enough to bump it.
He is very carefully doing both of these things, copying down what Ridge said and pretending that he's not just copying down with Ridge said.
Ambinder, agh.
It's just so telling that Ambinder refused to listen to any critic of the Bush Administration who was left of center, but the moment a righty opened up the conversation, suddenly it was gospel truth.
Wow, There are so many good and thoughtful comments here that I don't have much to add.
But, I just wanted to say that I felt compelled to go through the hassle of opening an account here and post a comment even though I never do that and I don't have time for it.
It's just amazing how a guy like Ambinder can say stuff like this now.
What kind of planet are you on?
You do deserve some credit for at least addressing some of what people have criticized you for.
Can you take the next step? Can you read all these comments on this post and take it in?
Andrew Sullivan managed to apologize for what he wrote at the beginning of the Iraq war hysteria. And it seemed like he got it eventually.
When are you going to get it?
Or do you have to play the right-winger to provide "balance" on the Atlantic website? Someone has to take the other side even if it doesn't make any sense?
On second thoughts, maybe this is a pretty cynical ploy.
Ambinder writes something that gets a lot of people angry, consequence lots of traffic directed to Atlantic, and lots of people being pissed enough that they sign up for an account and post a comment like me.
So Ambinder does his job to get traffic for his employer?
You are a complete twit. You write many words; you say nothing. Loser.
You've failed again, Assbinder.
I want to comment on the people who are saying things to the effect that Ambinder is a shill for the right. I've read this blog for a while and I'm not sure that's exactly right - at least, I have doubts about whether Mr. Ambinder consciously prefers the positions and personalities on the right.
Maybe so, but it has always struck me that a lack of discernment applied to the chorus of voices in America right now leads one to endorse (or acquiesce to) lots of information from the right. The right is the best at raising questions about things that previously seemed indisputable (see death panels), raising indignation about things that, while unfair, are second tier unfair (see Ricci plaintiffs being fawned over more than minority plaintiffs who have it rough all around), and blurting things with such utter confidence that media folks don't have the cojones to dispute them.
While on the left, people who have done studies and cost-benefit analyses and read reports and worked in policy and among people who actually know what they are talking about -- really, truly, know what they are talking about -- meekly peep about policy issues. The exception being lefty blogs, which are rejected as legitimate commentary on the issues because they are shrill.
So maybe Ambinder is a righty. But maybe he's just not rigorous enough to cut through the crap. If the latter is true, I repeat my comment about this sort of media being different from the sort of media Thomas Jefferson tooted his horn about. It's entertaining but hardly worthy of being called the Fourth Estate.
Eventually, the costs of the Bush administration to the American people will hit home in a terrible, significant way. The current economic crisis is merely a harbinger of what is to come, as TARP, the stimulus, and the Fed's actions have merely pushed the crisis off towards the future. Some people will blame Obama, of course, but most people will remember who started this mess-- the failed greedy grab for Iraqi oil, the encouragement of a consumption bubble to obscure the offshoring of our manufacturing economy, and the lies and lies and torture.
Ambinder will be answering to Chinese overlords then, and his columns will be about how the Red Army is really not so bad, once you get to know the generals....
Mr. Ambinder,
"Bush haters," "gut hatred," and variations on the theme have been defensive routines that illuminate the mental state of accusers more than the accused. At root, like so many other favored Republican tactics ("death panels" anyone?) they are intellectually dishonest.
You have shown yourself to be untrustworthy, and I expect it will take quite some time for you to earn your way out of the canyon you're continuing to dig for yourself.