Sometimes, Distances Aren't A Bad Thing

If this administration does anything positive, it's consistently by mistake--good results remaining after poor strategies.

A brand new one may have just happened: The White House Correspondents Dinner. There were no big splashes of controversy following this year's event. I like that. I think you should, too.

45 banned his staffers from attending. The press moguls have been skewering him, and them, and some got personal insults showered upon them at last year's gala-debacle. They had it coming, but if I were them, I'm not sure I would show up this year either.

Not that the White House Correspondents Association is at fault, at least not that much. They invited comedian Michelle Wolf to rip themselves and the White House press corps, and she did a terrific job of it. I'm sure 45, as the protective father figure, wanted to keep Sarah Sanders from getting her feelings hurt again--as if historian Ron Chernow, author of outstanding biographies of Washington and Hamilton and this year's featured speaker, would have done that.

This isn't that bad an idea, though. Journalists and those they cover have gotten pretty palsy-walsy in recent decades. The lens through which their reportage and those they report about have become more opaque and tainted.

It has served to create an alternative culture in which elites in media, government and culture have mingled almost by requirement. This serves none of us well.

It's a sophisticated game, one that has been going on for far longer than we think. Government staffers allow information to leak in various ways, some of which 'not for confirmation,' which means "I'll give you this if you don't use my name." The reduction of pure integrity is done to assist both sides of the table: One of which wouldn't have the information otherwise, the other seeks protection of their positions--either their very jobs or the access by which they have to a person of greater power. If you've ever heard the phrase "deep background," it means that the information you're absorbing was delivered, and came, with a mutually backscratching price.

The delicacy of this balance must remain ongoing. Sources become more reliable with time; the reporter knows the number to call for shadow confirmation of what they've heard from one other source which may or may not be familiar or that reliable. Journalists often use the two-source rule before 'going with the story': If two independent sources, who otherwise wouldn't know the other has the information, confirm its veracity, it's enough of a fact to put into a story and allow the greater public to see and react to it.

When things get too friendly between sources and journalists, the latter are more inclined not to go with stories they know shed poor light on the former. It's not exactly a cover-up, because other news sources may be looking for the same thing and one never wants to be 'beaten' on a key story. But it means that the journalist won't be immediately, and with passion, following up on a factoid they know they need to confirm. And maybe, with luck, the moment will pass, we'll all get on other things, and the factoid will have been largely forgotten, or the context in which it applies the greatest will have run its course. It's true especially if, as a journalist, I'm close enough to the source to believe, not without reason, that I'm the only person with this information for the present moment. I'll pass on an 'exclusive', something the source would never otherwise know, to continue to allow the conduit of information to keep flowing. This is tricky stuff and can bounce back badly on the journalist and the source, so it's a card that cannot be played often. Think of Deep Throat during Watergate: the meeting in the parking garage, in which both exchange what they know.

The other game is also played. If I'm a government staffer, I will definitely want to get to know certain journalists well and immediately, so as to get their trust and be the person they call first. I might do this because I don't like my boss, or because I do and I'm a willing 'plant' for the administration to spread news people will like, or create a buffer for news they might not like. So I'd better not be so full of myself to believe I'll be able to fool a journalist. I'll give enough information to be credible. I'm also aware that the journalist will be following up.

Either way, more distance between government staffers and journalists cannot be a bad thing. It may serve to keep both sides a bit more honest, if that's a term that can ever be utilized here. Because none of it is ever 100% complete: Nobody has all the information available, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in that person's best interest to let the other side know that it has. Accurate, reasonably thorough but quick impressions are the territory of journalism; completeness is that of history. Time is journalism's enemy; it is history's greatest ally.

Does this mean "fake news" is rampant and routine? Is 45 right? No, he isn't. That continues to be all about the fact--and I do mean fact--that he's not getting the comments and arrangement of facts (or in his case, pseudo-facts) that he's going to be pleased with, ever. He wants one news source (and with Fox, he is as close to it as anyone has ever been) to say exactly what he wants--a direct government- propagandized news source.

He won't get that. Even some of Fox's commentators have recently sounded off in ways 45 finds displeasing. And with relationships between journalists and sources so ongoing and free-wheeling, especially with friends inside this White House holding very little back because they understand what an enormous threat this president is, the combined effects of all these relationships serve to deliver enough information for us to gain a sufficient perspective on what this person is really like and how he intends to continue governing.

So if 45 tells his people to stay away from the WHCD, it won't solve his problems and it isn't likely to create many for those covering him. Those games go on in places we're not used to seeing (Though there are parties leading up to the WHCD that go on from the previous Tuesday, or so says Mark Leibovich in his book about the snarkiness of Washington called This Town. This year, 45 finally caved in and said that staffers were allowed to attend the pre-party parties--at which journalists could, and no doubt did, ask them for additional information or set up interviews to do so. See? Everybody gets what they want anyhow.). I'm not even sure he understood that going in, which is why so many excellent inside sources were developed so soon. Now that that toothpaste is out of the tube, it's proving to be problematic to stuff it back in.

And if journalists don't get quite as cozy with those on whom they report and have to work a little harder to get scoops, that's all right, too. As adversarial as 45 wishes to make things between him and the press, in actuality sometimes things aren't quite adversarial enough. In journalism as in politics, half of what truly counts is what we know about what is said--and half what we don't know, comprised of what is not said.

If media people become as much the stars as those they cover, we should be a little suspicious of that. Leibovich's book starts with the funeral of NBC News' Tim Russert, who died suddenly in 2008. He reported a scenario in which a striking number of people basically feigned the depth of their condolences so they could show up and strike picture poses with, for instance, Morning Joe and Mika. (In a later discussion, he told me that John McCain's 2018 funeral was much the same--to see and be seen more than honoring a great statesman.)

This is hardly about 45 taking anything like a high road; it's about the leftovers of a dinner of triteness amounting to ongoing pettiness. Now, more than ever, we need to have trustworthy sources of information. A compromise that results in a bit more distance between reporters and sources may just keep more of the former from being compromised by the latter.

In dealing with a president who has lied more than 10,000 times, and counting, it's vital that we extend a reasonable reliance upon the integrity of those from whom we get our straight facts about this liar. Since the results of those efforts have yielded mixed success, a little less self-congratulation and celebration of them feel more appropriate nowadays.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark