NEWS WAR
DESIGN FLAW
February 22, 2007THIS IS THIS
March 5, 2007If you haven’t been paying attention, Frontline is doing a four-part documentary about the challenges facing the news media. Like all Frontline programs, it is excellent. The first three parts have already aired, and you can watch them online:
Frontline – News War
“The battle between the White House and the national media is the battle over who controls the national agenda,” says commentator Patrick Buchanan. Mark McKinnon, former media adviser to President George W. Bush, agrees: “The Washington press corps for years thought that unless you talked to The New York Times and CBS, that you weren’t talking to the American public. Well, that’s just not the case anymore.” McKinnon feels that it is a White House prerogative to choose its own communications strategy: “Presidents … ought to determine who they want to talk to and when they want to talk to them,” he says. But William Safire, author and former New York Times political columnist, fears that hostilities between the administration and the press could threaten the media’s ability to hold government accountable. “The great check and balance that was built into the Constitution is under challenge,” he says. “You’ve got to have a relationship between the government and the press that’s adversarial, but not an enemy.”
Drawing on more than 80 interviews with key figures in the print, broadcast and electronic media, and with unequaled, behind-the-scenes access to some of today’s most important news organizations, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the challenges facing the mainstream news media, and the media’s reaction, in “News War,” a special four-part series.
The first two parts involve the relationship between government and the media, and discuss the Plame affair and other issues in the run up to war. The third part, which I am currently watching, discusses the way newspapers and television news has tried to adapt to the rise of the Internet and blogging. Frontline is consistently one of the best (and last) sources of thoughtful investigative journalism left in this country, and I highly recommend giving these shows a view.
