Robert Hennelly - The Press and Military Adventurism

The media miss the point of many stories involving US military actions by failing to remember history or provide context.

This week the crisis du jour was in Kosovo. Two months ago it was the missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan. But TV News sets no context on America's military and each new crisis drops like Skylab on the world scene seemingly independent of all previous history. Despite the constant lectures we receive on the importance that America plays in this post modern world, our media coverage of it is sadly lacking. In the new 24 hour news cycle international coverage is planet wide and a micron deep. How ironic: everyone concedes the nation's well being depends on the world but our media has been downsizing their overseas news gathering for a number of years. It costs a lot to keep us stylishly entertained.

In this bottom line environment it makes it hard to independently deny or confirm what is served up by the Pentagon or the State Department. They could say the Martians had landed and they could stage manage the pool reporters.
What we get instead are Washington head shots of administration officials naming this week's target and then the stock film of F-18s flaming off of the generic aircraft carrier then a quick cut to the blast off of the Tomahawk missile. All this in depth reporting can be done without leaving the beltway. You will notice, however, that whatever the crisis, wherever it is, the media uses the same file footage distributed by the Pentagon.

I am sure that in the control room they have a button which automatically produces these tired images labeled "Clinton saber rattling." If he is really mad they loop the clip so it repeats itself. That would mean a really big buildup.
So while the nation moved onto our saber rattling in the Balkans, I couldn't get over Africa. I was still stuck on our missile attack on the Sudan on what evidently was a pharmaceutical plant in a famine plagued and disease infected African country. You remember the Sudan? Did you follow the way the anonymous government sources kept changing their story after the attack and reality conflicted with the US version of events. Day after day the sources would offer another version of events and the media would dutifully report it. No less a personage than the President himself called the plant "a chemical-weapons facility." But he had no fear of being contradicted even as the foreign press relayed video from the Sudan plant of the charred life sustaining pharmaceuticals at the devastated plant.

It's like Jon Lovitz is running the country. 'Yeah, it was a VX plant, I mean a BS plant and it was run by Dr. No. Yeah...yeah...That's the ticket. "

It's hard to keep track of it all. Were the troops coming home from Bosnia this Christmas, or last Christmas.... When you are the lone superpower and an on the cheap cheerleading mass media mindlessly spews your handouts in exchange for access, it seems you don't have to waste time on little details like the validity of the targets you hit. And now, for more on the North Korean Scud missile fired over Japan, file footage at 11. Or was it a satellite launch?

Commentator Robert Hennelly is a contributing editor for New Jersey Monthly.

Today the Boston Globe is by far the largest newspaper in New England. Despite its preeminence in the region, The Globe comes off a tumultuous six months that has readers wondering what is the Boston Globe.... Monica Brady looks at the Boston Globe as a case study of a newspaper trying to stay relevant in turbulent times.

In recent years, most newspapers have seen their circulations decline. The Boston Globe is facing this and other challenges -- in circulation, in its identity and in public perception. According to an industry tracking group, the Audit Bureau of Circulation, it's lost almost a tenth of its readers in the past five years. And the Globe is also competing on three other fronts. In the city of Boston, it battles for news with the Boston Herald. Regionally it competes with the New York Times' New England Edition. And in the suburbs, it competes with community newspapers. Jim Naughton, president of a journalism think tank in Florida, The Poynter Institute, says the electronic age has also increased competition.

Jim Naughton: In this day and age, newspapers are not competing merely with other newspapers. They compete with broadcast TV, cable, and the myriad online ventures that are now presenting news.

Staying relevant amidst all this is a tall order. And now the paper is fighting for its credibility after this past summer when two columnists left the paper when it was discovered they fabricated people and quotes.

The Boston Globe began in 1872 as a small voice in Boston, one of nine newspapers crowded on a downtown street known as newspaper row. Almost since its inception, it was owned and published by the Taylor family. But five years ago that also became part of its history when the New York Times Company purchased the paper.

But despite its longevity, the Globe didn't become a nationally respsected newspaper until 1965 when Tom Winship took the helm as editor.

Now retired, Winship remembers when the paper proudly wore its liberal bias on its sleeve, and its front page.

Winship: We were a very, very activist paper during those years. The city was changing a great deal and we were huge players in the change that took place in the city.

A major turning point for the paper was when it took its stand against the U.S. Government's position in Vietnam, giving the Globe a national reputation. But locally, the Globe may be most remembered for its coverage of the 1974 federal court decision to integrate Boston's public schools.

The Boston Globe found itself in the middle of the violence with shots being fired into the newsroom and bomb treats called into editors' homes. The paper's intention was to inspire readers to activism. Winship did this by inspiring his writers to challenge themselves.

Many former and current Globe staffers say the Winship era was the best time to be a reporter at the paper because it was a "writer's paper". But Winship says this doesn't mean the writers ran wild.

Winship: It means we gave them a lot of freedom to write. We gave all the columnists a lot of freedom and every now and then we were tough on them. Once in a while, as all editors should do, we cracked down on them.

As is often the case, a writer's paper cultivates a colorful staff... one that can be hard to control. And some people inside the Globe say it also created a star system... that would haunt the newspaper in later years.

The culture that spawned stars also won the Globe 12 Pulitzer Prizes in nearly twenty years. But since Winship's departure the Globe has won just three pulitzers and now it's been disgraced by the departure of two columnists.

This summer, the paper's star system came crashing down. First the paper's award-winning black columnist, Patricia Smith, admitted making up people to give pizzazz to her columns. Then Globe management decided to closely examine Mike Barnicle, a white columnist who had claimed to speak for the common man for decades. Editor Matt Storin admits Barnicle may not have been investigated without Smith's fabrication first being discovered.

Storin: If the Patricia Smith episode had not happened, I'm not sure things would have come to a head on Mike Barnicle. Admittedly there were a lot of -- he had been here so long, 25 years, that were was a level of acceptance, the way that he did things.

Now Matt Storin is now faced with the task of regaining readers' trust. When he took over as editor in 1993, he felt the paper had lost its relevance to a large part of Boston.

Storin: It was basically mirroring the issues of interest to liberals and I wanted people, no matter what they thought of the Globe's editorial policy, to feel comfortable with the news pages of the Globe.

But reforms and the paper's credibility seem to have hit a brick wall with the Summer of Hell, as this past summer is so often called. One writer says the staff is demoralized and feels the paper's lost credibility. While one former staffer adds, "This summer made the paper a laughing stock of the city."

But almost everyone agrees that Storin has made improvements. He's given credit for beefing up the Globe's coverage of breaking news, strengthening foreign news and adding more weight to the paper's business and education reporting. But its unclear whether this is enough to bring readers back to the paper.

In the journalism world, opinions about the Globe are mixed. On the national front, the Globe has a solid reputation. Again, Jim Naughton of The Poynter Institute.

Naughton: First of all, it takes the coverage of news seriously. It's one of the newspaper companies the NYT Company and the local business execs of the Boston Globe are serious about, giving their audience a meaningful daily newspaper.

Closer to Boston, views are more mixed. Howard Ziff, a retried journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, says the Globe is not what it used to be under Winship direction.

Ziff: I think there some dazzle-- some pizzazz-- about the whole paper which is missing and I can't put my finger on it. It's not what it used to be.

Storin is now focusing on rebuilding the paper: making it more consistent, editing the columnists more closely and regaining the trust of readers. Storin says he will do this the only way he can, by putting out a quality newspaper.

Storin: The great thing about this business is that you get to come out every day, and I think the best statement we make each day is in the paper itself. And we remind our readers and our advertisers what it is we do, what our purpose is in the community, and how well we do it.

But its unclear whether Storin's efforts will be enough to bring back readers and keep the paper relevant in these changing media times. For On the Media, I'm Monica Brady in Boston.