Froomkin To HuffPo

Dan Froomkin has been hired by the Huffington Post. The post is Washington Bureau Chief, which means the duties are more editorial, but he'll write a column two times a week or so. Glenn writes:

Huffington says that it is Froomkin's views on the media that, for her, is his primary appeal. The key to vibrant, successful journalism, she said, is "getting away from the notion that truth is found by splitting the difference between the two sides, that there is always truth to both sides." Huffington argues that establishment journalism is failing due to "the idea that good journalism is about presenting both sides without a voice -- without any passion." The outlets that continue to adhere to that "obsolete" model "are paying a price." Froomkin -- who has written extensively about how passion-free, "both-sides-are-equally-valid" journalism is the primary affliction of the profession -- echoes that view: "The key challenge is to present an alternative to the 'splitting the difference' culture that has infested traditional media." [...]

For all the self-serving talk about how political journalism is dying, it is striking how new and online media outlets continue to thrive. Yesterday, Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo -- which began as a one-person blog -- announced a major investment from Netscape founder Marc Andreesen that is allowing it to double its reporting staff. And now today, a columnist fired by an old, struggling establishment outlet claiming "business reasons" as a motive is not only almost immediately hired by a new media entity, but was inundated with expressions of interest and even other offers from an electic mix of reporting outlets.
Clearly, journalism itself is not dying. What is dying -- and rightfully so -- is the staid, establishment-serving, passion-free, access-desperate, mindless stenographic model to which establishment journalism rigidly adheres. As The Post's Ombudsman reported from personal experience, Froomkin's firing left "an army of angry followers" and "an outcry from a loyal audience." People are obviously hungry for the type of real journalism Froomkin practices. The Huffington Post immediately capitalized on the Post's short-sighted and myopic decision to fire one of their most (and one of their very few) vibrant, passionate and innovative journalists. In this episode lies many insights about the real reasons establishment journalism is struggling severely.

While this shift to new media necessarily leaves behind those on the other side of the digital divide, and I hope that can get addressed, it's not like traditional media is doing all that much to keep themselves relevant and useful. Journalism won't die, but journalism as it is practiced in print and broadcast really wants to give itself a nice Viking funeral.

The Beltway Bubble

Just a coda to this "Nico Pitney asked a planted question" nonsense. I've never seen such an overt expression of jealousy in all my life. With the possible exception of Roger Cohen (who's great today, and will probably win a Pulitzer), nobody in America has had the kind of coverage on the Iran story that Nico has had. Certainly not Dana Milbank, who has spent the last few days embarrassing the entire profession of journalism with his foppish, bitchy gossip segment that summarized the Village's belief that politics is a game and they're the sportscasters covering it. So for him to dare to criticize the journalism of anyone else is completely nonsensical.

Asserting that President Obama's June 23 press conference included "prepackaged entertainment," Dana Milbank wrote in his June 24 Washington Post column that Huffington Post national editor Nico Pitney was "a planted questioner" who asked "a preplanned question." Milbank further wrote: "The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised." But while Milbank noted that "Pitney said the White House" was "not aware of the question's wording," he did not quote or paraphrase the question itself, which Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky described as "an important and tough question that got right to the heart of the matter." The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen called it "a terrific question that the president wasn't anxious to answer," while Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald referred to it as "one of the toughest questions at the Press Conference."

Andrew Sullivan exposes this dichotomy further, with Nico writing about a fairly important struggle by millions of Iranians, and Milbank gossiping about JibJab videos. Never mind the fact that Milbank is simply lying to make this whole thing appear more insidious; his interest in journalistic integrity doesn't pass the laugh test.

...Ari Melber attacks this from a different angle.

Since Obama was inaugurated, many media critics, citizen journalists and web activists have been calling on him to answer meaningful, unfiltered questions from citizens. After watching the Obama Campaign in action, people saw the potential for deeper, direct engagement between wired citizens and a President who gets new media and believes in transparency [...]

Thus it was likely -- and hardly surprising -- that a citizen question would be posed at a presidential press conference. Given the news, it happened to come from Tehran, not Tennessee.

So the complaints of several Washington reporters are not only odd, but hard to take at face value. It is particularly rich for reporters to protest that the White House told Pitney he might be tapped for a question. Every day, a few top White House correspondents have special access in press briefings, while many reporters are never called on (seating charts are powerful). And many Washington reporters routinely, secretly grant the White House blind quotes and restrictive ground rules in exchange for access. By contrast, Pitney transparently told readers about his dealings with the White House, in real time, on his blog. The public would be better served if all media outlets took that tack, publishing any arrangements, restrictions or ground rules along with every article or interview. (Readers would be interested -- media criticism and scrutiny tends to draw traffic across the spectrum.)

Greenwald, too.

Media Fine Whine

Nico Pitney has consistently provided the best coverage of any American journalist on the Iranian uprising. Better and more widespread than any major news organization, often based on primary sources, consistent, deep, and comprehensive. This is Huffington Post's finest hour, and they're not doing anything particularly revolutionary. They just set a reporter up with knowledge of social networking and liveblogging and put him to work. And he's performed brilliantly.

Today, he got to participate in the White House press conference, and before attending he solicited questions from Iranians on what to ask the President if he were called upon. The White House obviously noticed this, considering he's been the number one source for news and information about Iran, and wanted to reward him for his work as well as inject a different perspective into the questioning. So President Obama called on Pitney and was asked about what circumstances under which he would accept an Ahmadinejad victory, a difficult but necessary question to be asking a President who previously wanted to engage with the Islamic Republic.

“Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”

Out of this, the traditional media devises a conspiracy that Pitney is somehow the Jeff Gannon of the Obama Presidency, and that his question was chorepgraphed and therefore illegitimate. The White House quickly released a statement that they had contacted Pitney beforehand:

We did reach out to him prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian.

That's the whole point that people like Michael Calderone don't want to face. Pitney asked the TOUGHEST possible question to the President about Iran. If the question was "coordinated," as Calderone darkly suggests, it would sound something like "isn't what you're doing on Iran completely awesome and shouldn't John McCain apologize to you?" Instead, Pitney offered a policy question, from an Iranian, that forced Obama to engage with his own rhetoric about justice and bearing witness to the events.

Notably, the last time a Huffington Post reporter got called on, putting the traditional media's panties in a bunch, San Stein ALSO asked a very tough question to Obama about establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the Bush torture regime. Maybe the press corps isn't pissed about the Huffington Post getting called on, they're pissed about those reporters schooling them at the only thing they do all day.

Marcy Wheeler notes:

As to Calderone's bitching, it's out of line for several reasons. First, if I knew that Nico was hoping to ask a question from an Iranian, then chances are the people paid to know these things at the White House knew. What better tribute to democracy and free speech could the White House make than to allow this question to be posed to the President?

And, after all, one primary focus of the presser was Iran. There are few who would argue that Nico's reporting--his tireless compilation of news coming in from both traditional and citizen media--hasn't been far and away the best minute-to-minute news on the Iranian crisis (to take nothing away from the people offering superb commentary and expertise, which I consider something different). Maybe the Politico's media reporter has missed it, but Nico's doing something pretty historic with his reporting on Iran. So even assuming the White House isn't as up-to-speed as I am, how hard do you think it would have been for them to guess that Nico, who has been living and breathing the Iranian crisis since it started, would ask a question about Iran?

I mean, c'mon. To try to turn this into a scandal is to assume that both the White House and Politico itself are a lot stupider than I think they are.

I don't think you can possibly assume that about Politico.

Obama Presser Thread

If something interesting comes along.

So far the opening remarks on Iran are pretty much the same as he said in his statement over the weekend. He's also pushing back on the Iranian government's claim that the US is meddling in their internal affairs... "no iron fist is willing to shut off the world from bearing witness." He actually referenced Neda. "Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."

Now he's talking up Waxman-Markey, a little above what the bill actually does, frankly.

Health care "must and will be paid for," and "will bring down the crushing cost" of treatment. We must "preserve what is best about our health care system," but unless we fix what is broken, health care will become a burden to all of us. "Status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable"... that was a pretty generic statement on health care.

? on Iran: "We're still waiting to see how this plays out." I agree with Matt Yglesias that an Iran with this regime still in power will not be available for engagement, and Obama in his remarks seems to recognize that. The moderates who may have been able to push Supreme Leader Khamenei toward a greater engagement with the world are the ones bitterly opposing him on the streets. The hardliners have Khamenei's ear right now, and if the crackdown succeeds, they'll be the only ones left in the room. "How they handle the dissent within their own country will not only shape Iran's future but the relationship with other countries."

Obama SINGLES OUT Nico Pitney for a question, which Pitney solicited from Iranians earlier today. That's a fantastic moment for online journalism. Pitney asks under what conditions Obama will accept Ahmadinejad's victory. Obama acknowledges significant questions about the legitimacy of the election, but says that ultimately it's up to the Iranian people. "We can say unequivocally that there is a set of international norms and principles about violence and crushing dissent."

? about the systemic risk regulator in new financial regulation, and the role of the Fed. Obama says that the Fed performed better than other regulators, which I find dubious. He's on better ground talking about consumer protection and the CFPA (Consumer Financial Protection Agency), and here he admits that the Fed had responsibility over consumer protection. "We are not expanding the Fed's power but focusing on what the Fed needs to do." He wants to give the Fed resolution authority, such as what they could have had over AIG.

? by Major Garrett saying "what took you so long" to be appalled and outraged over Iranian repression. Typical neocon framing, and Obama doesn't accept it. He has to repeat this again, slowly, with smaller chunks of words... in a follow-up, he asks if Iranians are still allowed at July 4 celebrations, and he kind of dodges it.

? on the public option. Obama pivots to talk about health care reform more broadly. Cites the polls showing that 77% of Americans are satisfied with their health insurance, but that's going to end if we don't control costs. We cannot keep doing what we're doing. We have "a long-standing, critical problem with our health care system." It seems like he doesn't want to get into specifics. "Our top priority is to control costs." Talking about incentives and the delivery system, essentially the McAllen problem, which is something that the press has trouble reporting on. Obama says that he can't support a bill without significant cost control. He talks about how the bill has to be paid for, and can in part be done by shifting money already in the system. "I think it's also wise policy to start providing coverage for people who don't have health insurance or are underinsured... I get two or three letters a day" about health care horror stories.

"The public plan, I think, is an important tool to discipline insurance companies." He moves quickly into the health insurance exchange idea, which is also not discussed all that much, and which I'm planning a post about later. He's talking about a public option inside that exchange that makes sense. "Why would it drive private insurance out of business?" He really took on the faulty logic by insurance industries with that one. "Conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving people the best possible deal, that they can't compete... that defies logic."

? from Chip Reid going right back to this nonsense Iran argument from the neocons. He's not saying ANYTHING DIFFERENT TODAY that he did over the weekend. Chuck Todd does the same thing. Come on, guys.

? from Jake Tapper, asking if the public plan is non-negotiable. Tapper tries to make this argument about how the public plan would just destroy insurers on cost. Obama isn't drawing lines in the sand on the public option, despite given every opportunity to do so. The current position is that the public plan makes sense. I wish Obama said that the whole POINT is to make insurers compete on cost. "I'd like insurers to take note" on reducing administrative costs, and I don't think anyone should object to that. He did a decent job with that in the final analysis, but he declined to take a stand.

Obama did something really well at the end there, saying that he took the advocates of the free market to heart. If they're so damn great at delivering services, and if the government is so bad at it, then they shouldn't have a problem.

? Wow, that was a sucky question from McClatchy there, basically pumping the President for information on his smoking habits. To his credit, Obama answered it.

? on the Chilean President coming to the White House. He's obviously been briefed on the Chilean situation, and gets a dig in about Bush wasting the surplus.

? on unemployment and the need for a second stimulus package. Obama says not yet. And says that nobody had a sense of what the recession would look like. "We missed the mark as to our estimates of where unemployment would go." He acknowledges that unemployment will go over 10%. Says that in the absence of the stimulus, the economy would have declined much more. This is true, but there's a problem with this that I'd like to get into in a later post. "I don't expect people to be satisfied" with the progress on the economy. That's an honest take, saying that it's a tough period. As an example, the mortgage program isn't working as well as it should. Wants to focus on the short-term pitfalls in the economy, and setting the foundation for long-term growth.

Two more questions...

? on African-American unemployment rate hitting 20% potentially. It's good to ask Obama about things like this, which he appears reluctant to address. He's trying to play the "rising tide lifts all boats" argument by saying that we have to recover the entire economy. In some inner-city communities, the jobless rate was sky-high even before the recession. So then he starts in about programs that can focus on the inner city and give them ladders to get into the job market. I'd love to hear Obama talk more about these kinds of programs.

? Suzanne Malveaux with the final question, asks about Neda. Obama's seen the video, calls it heartbreaking, and that it's fundamentally unjust. Malveaux asks about the quiet in the cities, and how the demonstrators may be paralyzed by fear. Obama expresses concerns about that. "We've all been struck by the courage of people.... the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

We Need A Right-Wing Version Of...

I guess it's a true sign of the times. I remember countless conversations about how the left needs their version of talk radio, think tanks, Drudge, a message machine, etc. Now that the right is out of power, they are clamoring for their version of the Huffington Post, their version of MoveOn.org, their version of a Center For American Progress, etc. It's a real reversal.

Two problems with this. One is that the successful versions of grassroots organizations like MoveOn are organic. You cannot say "I'm building a right-wing MoveOn" and then expect everyone to join.

The second is that THE RIGHT ALREADY HAS THESE STRUCTURES. Most of them were built in response to existing structures on the right, and very intentionally so. Wanting to build new ones is nice and all, but rather besides the point. Conservatives have the Heritage Foundation. The American Enterprise Institute. Drudge. Talk radio. About 1,000 judicial organizations. CPAC. And on and on. Their problem is with IDEAS. Well over a majority of the public doesn't like them. And I've seen no indication that any of these new groups would alter any of those unpopular ideas. They still use tax cuts as a solution for everything, and any problem that cannot be solved by tax cuts doesn't exist. Having the 947th organization to promote that discredited idea won't exactly help.

Now, sometimes dressing up bad facts in a new suit can work, and maybe that's all that's going on here. The idea is that the new groups would remove the taint of the Republican Party's troubles. Maybe. But that R next to the name remains a pretty powerful reminder, at least for the next few years. I don't see this paying off in the near term.

Protecting Their Turf

Vice President Biden's chief economist Jared Bernstein held a blogger conference call today (my invite must have gotten lost in the mail, sniff), where he talked pretty frankly about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's final version that should see passage this week. Bernstein called the bill a "down payment" and that the health care and energy sections need to be "deepened" in the future. “My view is no windows are closed when it comes to these good ideas,” he said. They're hoping that the bill reduces unemployment by two percentage points in the next two years, but they still expect the jobless number to be hovering around 8%, or higher than it is even today, by the end of 2010.

Bernstein also explained that the stimulus and a recovery in the banking system have to work in tandem to move money through the economy. That's the only way you can get multipliers out of the stimulus spending.

You want the money to circulate smoothly and efficiently from those who have it to those who need it. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to spend the money instantly. But it means that when people want to park their money, those funds should come available to other people who have good business opportunities that could be exploited with the assistance of a little credit. That’s where a healthy financial system comes in.

You may have heard tales from Japan’s “lost decade” in which stimulus measures failed to actually get the economy moving. Part of the problem was somewhat ill-conceived and ill-executed stimulus. But perhaps a bigger issue is that the didn’t actually clean up their banking system. Instead, they put it on life support. And then they used fiscal stimulus to put employment on life support. But we don’t want life support, we want stimulus that actually brings us back to life.

This is all good stuff, and it's great to have an economist from the Administration who was in the room on some of these deals engaging directly with progressive bloggers. This is the kind of access that the traditional media gets quite often, and yet they seem to squander it on tangential issues and optics and horse-race nonsense. I think it's very telling that, at this time of economic crisis (including in the journalism industry) a main concern of some members of the White House press corps is that a blogger from the Huffington Post got to ask the President a question at his first press conference. They are literally steamed about this.

Mara Liasson, National political correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and long-time contributor to Fox News, appears to be fuming after President Obama called on Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein during yesterday’s news conference. (It’s said to be the first time a president has acknowledged a blogger during a White House press conference, so the moment generated a bit of press chatter.)

Just over an hour ago, Ana Marie Cox (formerly Wonkette, now frequenting MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow) reported in on Twitter:

Mara Liasson next to me; on the phone; just said "He called on Huffington Post! I was surprised he didn’t call on Air America!" Oh honey.

As Chris Bowers notes, there is a reason why this has drawn so much attention, and that's simple jealousy, and a feeling of being threatened by new media. But it's not like White House access by HuffPo or blogs has detracted from access by the traditional media. They still have far more resources and access, and yet they use it to the most insipid ends possible. Bowers continues that there's another element to this.

Since you can't stop the rise of the new medium, the only available tactics left are to discredit the emerging new outlets within the new medium that operates independently of your control (portray independent new media operators as rabid, inexperienced, uninformed, arrogant, newcomers) while simultaneously working to co-opt their tactics within that new medium (hire a bunch of rabid, inexperienced, uninformed, arrogant, newcomers to produce content for your outlet). So, for example, you attack the credibility of the largest independent new media political website, the Huffington Post, write diatribes about other large blogs such as Daily Kos, and pass Congressional resolutions chastising the largest online political organization, MoveOn.org, while simultanesouly hiring bloggers to produce content for your show, inviting them as guests on your programs, and trying to start email based activist organizations of your own.

All of this is done not because new media itself is despised, but because new media has allowed alternative power centers on the left-wing of the Democratic / progressive coalition to rise as challenges to established, and largely corporate, dominance. No one in the political and media establishment would attack the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or Moveon.org if they were operating as supportive adjuncts to, say, the Blue Dog coalition. The reason they are viewed as dangerous and worthy of attack is because of the political views they espouse, not just because they are new media.

It's an interesting thesis. Certainly there is a marginalization that goes on that makes individuals in traditional media happy, but also serves their corporate conglomerates' ends. Where they don't have the expertise, knowledge or even access, all they have left is perceived authority. And when that goes away, what are they left with? Shrinking audience share.

(Of course, they do have resources, and we need a vibrant and robust media in this country because I can't visit Afghanistan in my spare time. But the chattering class is really threatened. Which is why they are the most vicious.)