Woodward and lessons from Cowles Media

At the heart of Cohen v. Cowles Media lives a common journalistic ethical quandary: Is access worth the price of admission? The journalists in Cowles bargained for an unknown secret in exchange for the ability to source that secret. When the secret didn’t rise to its hyped level, they cried foul and took their ‘money’ back, lesson learned: don’t make sight unseen bargains with desperate political operatives. Access has a steep price.
They then turned back to their journalistic instincts and wrote a story with real newsworthy import – why are 12 year old shoplifting offenses fair game at the 11th hour of a political campaign? In the end, they lost on a flimsy and controversial contract law doctrine.
But what’s important is that their instincts were right (at least after the bargain). And it was at least comforting to know that the reporters had the instinct and sense to refuse becoming pawns of a smear campaign.
But today’s ‘elite’ reporters not only lack this instinct, they relish their roles as pawns. Because now we see that it was not only Judy Miller blurring the line between government and press, but Bob Watergate-breaking Woodward, recently testifying to knowledge of the Plame leak via a yet-unnamed ‘Senior White House Official’ on a date even before Libby first told Miller.
And while there’s nothing wrong per se with Woodward’s actions – he didn’t necessarily have an obligation to tell anyone, including Patrick Fitzgerald, having not been asked. But Woodward has aggressively criticized this investigation from day one, appearing on dozens of talking head news shows. And obviously, he’s never once mentioned his involvement. And as we now know, his involvement changes the overall picture somewhat, since we have yet *another* WH official hammering away at journalists with what they seemed to think was discrediting information.
At some point, whether Woodward thought this investigation was “merely a firecracker” or not, the leak had become the story, just as in Cowles. As time went on, Woodward’s held information became increasingly newsworthy. His silence speaks not only volumes about where Woodward’s allegiance fell, but about how dulled his instincts have become. And it also speaks to the overall problem of access.
To some extent, access has always been a paradox — journalists covering politicians are somewhat hamstrung by the politician’s option to simply not speak to him/her. But it can be a bigger or smaller problem depending on the matrix between what the public believes to be true at a given moment and what is being peddled by the opinion leaders. Pure propaganda is not an attractive sell if it doesn’t at least capitalize on the reader/watcher’s own observations.
This problem is eased along by a system that doesn’t reward hungry journalists like it should, but has rather fostered an ‘insider journalist’ regime, where the same familiar faces enjoy immense access, but have lost any edge they might have once possessed. You see them each week on Meet the Press. I’ll watch that show again when they at least honestly re-title it ‘Talking Points War’.
Anyway, back to Woodward, I can’t help but be reminded of the movie Rush, where Jason Patric goes undercover to bust a drug ring, only to find himself addicted. Woodward has been ‘in’ too long and can’t even tell that he’s hooked on junk.
Or perhaps All the Kings Men is a better cultural analogy, since it was the titular model for his own All the President’s Men. The idealistic young governor Willie Stark rises to prominence due to his successful dismantling of a corrupt system, but fails to recognize his own slow corrupt descent and soon becomes embedded into a system he once despised. It’s hard to be critical of something you’re a part of.