|
EYE ON EUROPE |
 |
|
MEDIA 'REPTILES'
|
Playing mind games
with the media stars
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
President George W. Bush harbors a bitter dislike for the media but you wouldn’t know it watching his down-home performances at the Rose Garden press conferences. The decider wants the world to believe that he is on chummy terms with the entire gang.
Sitting in front of the television in Europe and observing the process in action, I often find this public charade to be of stupefying hypocrisy.
We know Bush despises the free-thinking ways of print and broadcast media because he has said publicly that he never actually reads or watches the news. Mouthpiece Tony Snow has people who do it for him and present the prettiest picture possible in daily summaries.
Yet each time the decider meets with the “reptiles,” as journalists are called in some European countries, he jokes and snorts at his own clever remarks, picking out questioners by their first names and wisecracking about an old suit, a pair of sunglasses or some private joke left over from the last trip to the Indiana American Legion convention. The journalists appear uneasy lest they seem guilty of complicity, but they go along.
Bush is working hard at these events to
defuse possible hostile questions by attempting to flatter the
hacks into submission. How can you slam a person--even the decider--who
seems to want to be your friend? Reporting the news is hard work.
Reporting has always been a mind game between two antagonists
with opposite aims. The reporter needs to get in and out with
the goods while the source wants a civilized meeting that gives
away nothing. In my experience, IBM is the worst company in the
world to cover. Every comment from an IBMer is cooked up and
served cold.
The late James Reston never covered IBM.
But he put it best when he defined good reporting as getting
the other guy to tell you something he didn’t intend to
tell you. This requires accomplished schoomzing skills and works
only some of the time.
The tension in these relationships comes from the journalist’s
belief in the people’s right to know everything, a debatable
concept drummed into young reporters at journalism school.
His or her objective is to get at the truth, and there is no higher calling than that. The search for truth helps explain why journalists can sometimes seem so full of themselves. They believe their job is of a nobler order than anything a politician or business executive could ever understand.
Ken Olsen of the old Digital Equipment computer company once regaled a friend of mine over dinner about a girl from Business Week--younger than his own daughter--who came to see him and ended up almost ruining his company with a negative story. Actually she had found him unhelpful and instead based her story on astute market analysts and competitors. DEC was soon gone regardless of the BW story.
Now in my sunset years I occasionally run training sessions to help business people understand what’s “wrong” with journalists. Without betraying the real secrets of the trade, my list of attitudes gets into the head of the typical journalist--although I have never found one who admits to all these characteristics:
A journalist …
… operates to his or her own agenda,
which is unlikely to be anything like yours.
… may appear friendly and try to put you at ease, “reading
your desk” and commenting on the photo of your spouse and
kids.
… is looking for conflict, not commentary on what a great
job you’re doing.
… comes to you loaded with negative information gathered
from outside informants.
… is unconcerned about the consequences to you if you should
happen to say something you did not intend to say.
… is comfortable being superficial (‘I’m an instant
expert.’)
… will ask for the impossible but will settle for less.
… may save the hard questions for the end.
… will seduce you and disappear, like a bad lover.
©2006 by Michael Johnson. The photo of Pres. Bush is courtesy of the official White House website. He's actually signing the bill to build a 70-mile fence along the Mexican border, not a script for his press conference. This column first posted Oct. 30, 2006.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Michael Johnson. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Michael's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|