Freedom of the Press

was watching a hearing on this issue and the future of the media in this country and alot of great points were made about the conservative control over the media and all the obvious things you'd expect at a hearing like this... but

invited to speak was a reporter with the BBC who is based out of Washington here.. and he made an important point about american reporters relationship with their politicians vs british reporters relationship with their politicians

he was saying that in Britain, the reporters are pretty harsh with the politicians.. they question everything.. and they are also allowed follow-up questions whereas here not only are they not very harsh and when they are the politicians are allowed to not answer.. but because there is no follow-up that you never really get a real sense of the situation..

for example, if a reporter asks a politician a difficult question... say about the Iraqi War... the politician can just decline to answer and then the next reporter asks their question and it just goes on and it never makes the news or anything... but if you could allow follow-up that same reporter could maybe re-word the question as to get an answer or possibly just put the politician on the defensive

basically the point was that our media in america is just weak and the politicians are able to control it with such ease in this country and it is almost the exact opposite in Britain

just made me think... any thoughts?

[Adam D]

Originally Posted by stargazer

basically the point was that our media in america is just weak and the politicians are able to control it with such ease in this country and it is almost the exact opposite in Britain

just made me think... any thoughts?

Sort of ironic considering BBC and other media outlets in Britian are public entities.

[Satchel]

Originally Posted by Adam D

Sort of ironic considering BBC and other media outlets in Britian are public entities.

They love a good bit of irony over there

[Adam D]

Damn perfidious albion. (That one's for Krash)

To start, if journos in this country were as hyped about attending a political press conference as they are about attending something as "miscellaneous" as the Oscars or American Idol finals, I think we would begin to pave the way to a news arena comparable to that of the BBC.
Secondly, so many American reporters forget what they learned in school (such as "stay out of the story") and they long to look like heroes in the eyes of readers/viewers...so alot of the story content is slanted. It seems like the reporters are simply appreciative that a government official actually answered their question, and that becomes obvious later in print.
Even the reporters that do have a passion for politics don't seem to phrase their questions with the poise and tact that the British portray, so the politicians dismiss them nonchalantly. So the only story they get is one with limited access to accurate information.
And sadly, many Americans would rather hear about local shenanigans than know what is happening internationally or even nationally for that matter (back to point number one).

[Adam D]

Originally Posted by Luxe

Even the reporters that do have a passion for politics don't seem to phrase their questions with the poise and tact that the British portray, so the politicians dismiss them nonchalantly. So the only story they get is one with limited access to accurate information.

The administration's condemnation of Amnesty International's report is a good example of this. Bush & Co. came out claiming that it's absurd because the US stands for freedom. That doesn't even make sense, but nobody was really asking pointed questions as they should have. E.g. if the rebuttal is that the US stands for freedom, why is the US holding prisoners in secret prisons, without legal representation or legal proceedings, and sending prisoners to nations where torture is accepted?

Of course, part of that has to do with the mechanics of these press conferences. If you're known to ask "mean" questions, nobody will call on you or your press pass will be denied. It's fixed. Media outlets like the NYT can get away with more pointed questions because of how big the NYT is, but even then there's not much in the way of really critical questions.

Absolutely they are fixed. The press conferences have really become an absurd public display of politicians throwing words around and flexing their muscles. They already know what they are going to say before the questions are even asked (or not asked). It's too bad that the function of these conferences is no longer to call to meeting a group of leaders in order for the people to get answers.
I got nothing more. Great example. Thanks Adam.

so how do we solve the problem?

our politicians are not being held accountable except by other politicians and nobody is doing anything about it

Originally Posted by stargazer

so how do we solve the problem?

our politicians are not being held accountable except by other politicians and nobody is doing anything about it

Educate college students going into journalism better. Make this field more cut-throat and harder to get into. If newspapers were independently owned like they used to be instead of being part of huge media companies like Belo then maybe the reporters wouldn't be so afraid of pissing off their editors or executive producers, etc.

are any newspapers independently owned? besides Observer-type papers?

Originally Posted by stargazer

are any newspapers independently owned? besides Observer-type papers?

Not that I can rattle off the top of my head. If one that wasn't was to break away in a ballsy effort to give hard-line journalism a rebirth of sorts, that would be great. Sure those shows like Meet the Press and Hardball with Chris Matthews exist...but even still those are basically scripted and cannot step out of line with the networks that air them.