Has Twitter saved pack journalism?

American columnist Michael Kinsley famously insisted that if you have the patience of a birder, you might hear a politician tell the truth. "A gaffe” he explained, “is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." While celebrating the aggressive, “mojo” press coverage of the scandal surrounding the Canadian Senate and Stephen Harper’s office, Toronto Star columnist Edward Greenspon

penned a noteworthy gaffe about his own profession:

“Then there’s the odd galvanizing role played by social media, particularly Twitter. The gallery vacillates between pack mentality and institutional incoherence. The Harper government was skilled at dividing and conquering. Increasingly, though, a group of Ottawa reporters gather every evening on Twitter, bucking one another up by sharing their journalistic humour, biases and insight. That they may well reinforce pack prejudices is beside the immediate point. Their virtual salon is reminiscent of the old days, when gallery members worked at close quarters in the famed Hot Room on the Hill and then hit the press club bar.”

Twenty-four/seven "news" and the amateurish presence of the social media long ago killed the 3-martini lunch and the 5 o’clock debrief at the Ottawa Press Club. Communication professionals and hacks wondered whether the “pack” might die, and whether a multitude of journalistic voices would send conflicting messages across our troubled lands.

Greenspon apparently believes that “institutional incoherence” in a free press is a bad thing and that pack prejudice today is beside the point. So, he’s simply thrilled by the palpable esprit de corps amongst his old colleagues in Ottawa today.

Twitter has become a tool to reassure, to say the same thing in ever more clever ways, to form a working consensus on what’s happening, in real time—getting done what used to demand soul-destroying nights at the Club and exhausting days on a campaign plane. This is progress?

Chantal Hebert, I’d rather you had turned it down

I know it’s unseemly to be judgmental between Canada Day and the Fourth of July. However, I was disappointed to read that the Toronto Star’s political columnist Chantal Hebert agreed to accept the Governor General’s appointment as new officer of the Order of Canada.

She’s better than that.

On most days, Hebert’s column is the best thing about that paper. She’s shrewd, unsentimental, and doesn’t seem to worry about what the powerful think about her work.

The Order of Canada is quite different; it’s all about reputations. It is the highest honor the Canadian establishment can confer on a Canadian. Its recipients are recognized for living up to the motto “Desire a better country” and, in accepting this recognition, they must wear a lovely white and red pin.

It’s one of those inventions young countries use to build national pride. It’s for being constructive. That’s fine. But, being constructive is not an important element of great journalism.

Political journalism doesn’t deliver better government, more rational elections, or less mediocrity in public affairs. It’s not in the nation-building business. Exceptional political journalism, however, does serve free speech and, in that service, demonstrates that the best way to the truth is through sharp debate.

Its sine qua non isn’t superior intelligence or a loving grasp of their host country—it's independence. Consequently, it doesn’t feel right; it looks presumptuous for the powers that be to honor those whose first order of business is to keep them honest.

This is obviously a minority opinion. Some nights on the national news you’ll see at least two of those special pins kibitzing with each other. What they say may be authoritative and, usually, one is on the edge of retirement or already resting in a think tank, but it still looks terribly cozy.  

Chantal Hebert is too young to be tame. But that pin may cause me to wonder.

The Americans are surprisingly more reserved about how they parcel out their awards. This year, Barack Obama presented 12 Medals of Freedom, compared to 70 appointments to the Order of Canada. No active Washington pundit was named. Bob Dylan was recognized for his lyrics. Unfortunately, of course, he hasn’t had anything dangerous or coherent to say about politics for a generation.

Do political journalists need informal time with politicians?

Certainly, many retired journalists think so. Their memoirs invariably include charming stories about relaxing and recreating with the powerful, and expressions of regret that relations are more formal these days. In his review of the autobiographies of Canada’s Allan Fotheringham and Craig Oliver, Hugh Winsor offers an emphatic defense of the intimate mode.

He dismisses the idea that journalists should only be “peeping Toms, that nothing is off the record and that any personal contact must be confined to the journalist-newsmaker paradigm.” Winsor exclaims:

           “Inappropriate contact? Nonsense!

“Serious political journalists should share with politicians and bureaucrats an interest in the values and overall health of the democratic society in which we operate. That does not mean supporting any particular political or partisan beliefs or taking sides in the game. But our ability to understand, evaluate and describe the game can only by improved if we spend some time in the dressing room as well as watching the play from well above the ice in the press box.

“That means we have to trust that serious journalists will have enough intellectual honesty and judgement to not be co-opted or corrupted by the better understanding that comes from personal contact and knowledge.”

Click on: http://reviewcanada.ca/

Winsor’s personal civility and integrity are real. His appreciation of what’s going on, however, is worryingly generous.

The politician and the journalist actually don’t get up in the morning to serve the overall health of their democratic society. One gets up to advance his or her political agenda and the other gets up to inform the public. Political leaders would like people to readily agree with them; the good journalists often make that difficult.

This tense picture of their relationship isn’t an artificial construct to keep them out of each other’s beds. It’s in the nature of their very different occupations.

Of course, politicians will take a few risks to win deeper understanding, even a little empathy from journalists. Leaders all want to be fondly remembered and journalists write history’s first draft. Furthermore, incumbents eventually come to think that they will benefit by being better understood—that the most worthy observers will naturally be on their side. As John Adams warned, “Power always thinks it has a great soul.”

Nevertheless, the politician surviving in office doesn’t spontaneously do down-time with the press. The journalist may relax, but the best politicians—the one’s that must be most carefully watched—never stop playing politics; never stop looking for advantage or, maybe, for a decent break on an awkward story sometime in the future.

The danger in Winsor’s point of view, however, is the expectation that that informal time in the dressing room ensures better journalism. That what power grants to the few, makes superior journalists.

Surely, the socially maladroit journalists who secure superb sources, expose skimpy reasoning and falsehood, and literally disrupt the bonhomie of political capitals with substantive leaks are as essential as the well-rounded lovers of the game. 

Image politics and Britain’s free press

Prime Minister David Cameron is in political trouble because of his close association with journalists who have used phone hacking to increase sales of the now defunct News of the World.  He wants desperately to share his embarrassment broadly, proposing a government commission to look into the “culture, practices and ethics” of the British press.

Like any run-of-the-mill narcissist, Cameron insists that everyone in journalism and politics has participated in his mistakes. Cameron declared, that “we” have all been in this together, “Yes, including me.”

And then he got serious:

“Of course it is vital that our press is free,” Mr. Cameron said. “That is an essential component of our democracy and our way of life. But press freedom does not mean that the press should be above the law.

“While it’s vital that a free press can tell truth to power, it is equally important that those in power can tell truth to the press.”

Click on: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/europe/10press.html 

This is trite and dangerous. The prospect of government “reform” only makes great journalism less a sure thing.

Politicians cozy up to the press because they want a tame press, not a free one.

Governments don’t necessarily tell the press the truth. The journalists that democracies rely on verify what governments claim to be true. That is an adversarial responsibility. It is not informed by empathetic dinner parties.

(As the cynic Sir Humphrey Appleby in the satire “Yes, Minister” warned, “You can’t believe anything, until the government denies it.”)

Being exposed for hanging out with hustlers and sucking up to a press baron, of course, diminishes Cameron’s image. However, they are exactly what image-obsessed Prime Ministers do. His discomfort provides a learning opportunity, not an excuse for his government to “reform” Britain’s free press.