Back in the day, there were certain things that reporters knew about the subjects they covered but never wrote about. The biggest thing that comes to mind is Pres. John F. Kennedy’s health and his affairs. When the story broke of Sen. Gary Hart and Donna Rice (on a yacht aptly named “Monkey Business“) it seemed as if the gloves were off. But as coverage – or lack thereof – of John Edwards demonstrated, that was not the case.
The Rolling Stone article of Gen. Stanley McChrystal has generated an entire new conversation about the topic, first revealed in a now-scrubbed posting on Politico. An NPR conversation about how freelance writer Michael Hastings reported puts it all out there:
BOB GARFIELD: Let me ask you now to describe the difference in the dynamics between a beat reporter on the defense beat or any other and someone who parachutes in for one story.
JAMIE McINTYRE: Well, the difference is the sort of one-off reporter doesn’t need to worry about whether he’s going to get future access or not, whereas the beat reporters, like when I was at CNN, I needed access; I needed to be able to get to the key people to find out what was going on when bombs were dropping or things were happening.
And the way you do that is you forego reporting all of the sort of off-color jokes or informal banter that goes on when you follow these guys around, focus on the big picture, and they begin to trust you. As a result, when you need to know what’s going on, you get access.
If you do what Michael Hastings does, they’re never going to talk to him again. Of course, he — he doesn’t care. The fallout from that though is that they may also not talk to a lot of other reporters, as well.
BOB GARFIELD: Not reporting the off-color jokes, the intemperate comments and so forth, you call that the dirty little secret of beat reporting.
JAMIE McINTYRE: You know, it implies this sort of overly cozy relationship. These military officials that we’re following around, they’re not our friends. We’re frenemies, we’re not friends. You know, one thing we’ve learned from this whole episode is that military officers cannot tell you what they’re really thinking without being in peril of losing their jobs.
So the dirty little secret is yeah, we sort of informally agree not to report a lot of things that we see and hear, some of it for legitimate security reasons, and some of it because it could just be embarrassing. And the tradeoff is we get a continued relationship with these people and we can get information.
And by the way, it is information that we can still hold them accountable for, it’s just that we sort of cover them.
Doesn’t it make you all warm and fuzzy to know that reporters are holding back, keeping to themselves information that they will later “hold them accountable for,” should the need arise? How is that different from, say, politics?
That reporters do this is no surprise to me, having witnessed it firsthand. I doubt, though, that the general public realizes the extent to which this goes on – and affects what they read or hear daily.
A freelance reporter brought down a general by telling the whole truth. Can you imagine what our news would be like if every reporter did the same?
h/t News Commonsense
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
The other side of this topic I keep seeing and hearing — mainly in LTE’s in the editorial pages of larger publications and in listener feedback on talk radio programs — is something to the effect of “why is a U.S. Army General talking to Rolling Stone in the first place?” Mostly from people whose only experience with the magazine is having watched half of Almost Famous. Their long-form political journalism is as a rule better and more-informative than what you’d find in Newsweek or Time.
Which I think is a large part of why journalists are doing so much navel gazing and recriminating over this. For at least three days in a row, the Washington Post’s front page article was more or less a book report about a much better article written by a freelancer on behalf of a smaller publication. Politico took it a step further and outright plagiarized Hasting’s article on their website until the Rolling Stone‘s editorial board complained that it violated the fair use principles of copywrite law.
It’s got to be demoralizing when you’re running or writing for a newspaper and the lead article in your publication is about how another publication’s doing much better journalism than you are.
There is a saying about ‘trading skepticism for access’.
This is what is being talked about here. Withholding information to “hold them accountable” almost sounds like blackmail. Unfortunately for them, this is not the role of a journalist/reporter.
It sounds like some reporters think they are more important than the stories they cover, gathering power over interview subjects, etc.
It is almost completely broken. That is why the proliferation of so-called “new media” has happened. Not that some of this larger group is any better, of course.
What Taibbi said.
Did you mean this? Or this?
The “Lara Logan, You Suck” piece. Drills straight down to the heart of the matter.
You know, I totally forgot who Lara Logan was until just now — how delightful that CBS decided to spearhead their their critique of Hastings with a reporter who has a history of literally going to bed with her sources.
F’ing outstanding.
Ah – gotcha. Good piece.