Unspoken Words
by Bob Cook
On the afternoon of March 13, Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman found his e-mail box filling up with what he called "congratulations from Bush-bashers" for a note he posted on the journalism site Romenesko. It relayed how he was cowed by a presidential press aide into changing a quote for a story.
For his e-mailers, Weisman's public self-flogging was more evidence — on top of last week's was-it-scripted-or-not televised press conference — that the George W. Bush administration is hell-bent on controlling information, but Weisman says the blame is not all on Bush — the press cannot be tamed unless it allows itself to be tamed.
"My thought was, this is a mutual process," Weisman said in a telephone interview. "All of us, kind of going along with the process. The anecdote was, I didn't fight the process. It was not supposed to bash the White House. We all let this happen."
Here's what happened in Weisman's case, according to his letter. Weisman, an economics reporter for the Post, was working on a profile of R. Glenn Hubbard, at the time the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Weisman wanted to talk to a White House economist about Hubbard; if this were still the Clinton administration, which Weisman covered for the Baltimore Sun, he would merely pick up the phone, dial the switchboard and get patched through to the economist. Being the Bush administration, he had to go through the press office. But there was more:
The catch was this: The interview would be off the record. Any quotes I wanted to put into the newspaper would have to be e-mailed to the press office. If approved, the quotation could be attributed to a White House official. (This has become fairly standard practice.)
Since the profile focused on Hubbard's efforts to translate relatively arcane macroeconomic theory into public policy, the quote I wanted
referenced the president's effort to end the double taxation of dividends: "This is probably the most academic proposal ever to come out of an administration." The press office said it was fine, but the official wanted a little change. Instead, the quote was to read, "This is probably the purest, most far reaching economic proposal ever to come out of an administration." I protested that the point of the quote was the word 'academic,' so the quote was again amended to state, "This is probably the purest, most academic, most far reaching economic proposal ever to come out of an administration."
What appeared in the Washington Post was, "This is probably the purest, most academic ... economic proposal ever to come out of an administration." What followed was an angry denunciation by the White House press official, telling me I had broken my word and violated journalistic ethics.
I had, of course, violated journalistic ethics, by placing into quotation marks a phrase that was never uttered by the source, ellipses or no ellipses. I had also played ball with the White House using rules that neither I nor any other reporter should be assenting to. I think it is time for all of us to reconsider the way we cover the White House. If administration officials want to speak off the record, they are off the record. If they are on background as an administration official, I suppose that's the best we can expect. But the notion that reporters are routinely submitting quotations for approval, and allowing those quotes to be manipulated to get that approval, strikes me as a step beyond business as usual.
And the problem, as Weisman is not the first to point out, is that the Washington press is allowing itself to be tamed in the name of maintaining access to the White House. The odd thing is, as Weisman and others have described it, no one really gets any unfettered access to anyone in the executive branch, so essentially they're worrying about losing access they don't have.
The challenge is how to cover the White House when it doesn't tell you anything, or is intent on controlling everything it tells you. For a press corps used to leaks and self-promoting aides willing to share information, it's a difficult concept to get its collective head around. For this reason, it's too bad they never had the experience of covering Bob Knight for the Indiana University student newspaper.
From 1978 to 1994, the notoriously media-unfriendly (and unfriendly in general) Knight refused to speak one-on-one to the Indiana Daily Student, and assistant coaches and players were restricted as well. The other years of his tenure he didn't talk a lot to the paper, either. In fact, any reporter he deemed unfriendly generally would only get to hear a Knight quote after a game, if it was one of the occasions where Knight didn't get upset and walk out of the press conference.
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When I arrived in Bloomington in the fall of 1987, no one even bothered anymore to get a one-on-one interview with Knight. The strategy was, you gathered what you could at postgame news conferences (the paper hadn't been banned from covering games), and you used whatever sources you could gather outside the program. Generally, you not only got what you needed, but you were able to get some interesting angles you might not have thought of otherwise when you relied on "official" sources. Players' mothers, for example, were always great for insight.
Of course, it's a bit more complicated at the White House; it's likely Barbara Bush isn't going to be much help in shedding light on the administration's plans for Iraq. However, Weisman said in the interview that he thinks it may be time for Washington reporters to figure out where else they may have to go to get information on the Bush administration. He and his editor have agreed he won't be changing quotes or agreeing to onerous interview terms again.
"It'll suck," he said of not being able to get access on his terms. But "there are many ways to skin a cat in Washington."
E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.
— graphic by D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)
