California Insider Daniel Waintraub posts the following comments on an entry below discussing the SacBee's news story on how the Davis camp has sought to link Issa with Nazis whackos:
Should newspapers spread lowly allegations leveled by state politicians? Prestopundit takes the Bee to task for reporting the allegation of Davis allies that Rep. Issa was somehow linked to Nazi sympathizers because he had a table outside a gun show at which Nazi memorabilia was shown at one booth among thousands of exhibitors. Aside from the fact that Prestopundit is guilty of the same crime of which he is accusing the press, I'd suggest that we are all correct in reporting the tactic. That's because I think the story here isn't the accusation but the accuser. This is the governor, not some two-bit nobody. And when the governor is willing to do this kind of stuff, you're actually protecting him by ignoring it. Voters need to see the depth of his desperation so they can use that to weigh other claims they hear from him. And by the way, Issa's Rescue California site posted the story, so I assume they agree.
Weintraub has a legitimate point -- up to a point. As we've known since at least Daniel Boorstin's The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, many political news stories are based on manufactured events -- such as the staged press conference. Anyone can manufacture news -- if you can get the news media to cover it. The LA Times has given several pages of coverage today to two guys who collected a total of four signatures (half their own) for a "petition" calling for Schwarzenegger not to run for Governor. The article is essentially an entertainment article, but when you are talking political personalities, the dividing line is very thin here. Two guys, a piece of paper, and four signature -- and you've manufactured "news" in the LA Times.
Newspapers have choices to make -- if someone puts up a podium in a hotel conference room, what gets said at the podium does not automatically make it into the next days paper. It has to have news value.
The question becomes -- does wild innuendo from a source of power qualify as news content, and if so, how should it be covered? This was the problem the press faced with the wild and false charges of Joe McCarthy (although McCarthy was in part working with word of mouth insider information that history has proved roughly true, in some instances -- lots else was grossly exaggerated or simply made up stuff).
On the side of making headlines and news stories out of this sort of stuff is the compelling argument that more information is better than less information (a very strong argument in my view). A second, related argument is that we should know about what sort of people these are who would do and say such things.
But this all becomes a chicken and egg problem -- if the press wouldn't put grossly false and out of the ballpark stuff from a manufactured "press conference" in the papers -- and in the headlines -- then the professional political people wouldn't throw this stuff against the wall, hoping to see what sticks. And it does stick. The lies and the innuendo become legend -- and then, for many, the fact. And you know what they say about legend -- when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. And as we have seen in case after case, eventually this is what the press does -- it prints the legend -- or some hazy cloud of legend, image, reputation, public perception -- and the facts gets lost, and damned.
If a story is simply false, silly, empty -- a nothing story, why make it a story at all. It's all fake news manufactured out of hot -- and poisonious -- air. Why let this fakery see the light of day -- why play the fake news game at all? The problem is that the press is part of the team building the news story out of thin air -- it wouldn't exist without their cooperation, even if the press intends not to cooperate by attempting to turn the story around on the political hacks pumping on the fake news pump. Many times what the political hacks deserve is simply for the press to walk away -- or not show up in the first place. A press conference on "Issa and the Nazis" should be one large empy hotel room with nobody present but a political hack or two dialing on his cell phone, trying to get a reporter on the phone .. or a date for dinner.
Posted by Greg Ransom
