A Skeptical View of the Cynicism Epidemic   

Sen. Trent Lott is rarely mistaken for A.f. Liebling. But the Mississippi Republican brings wisdom to the debate over "cynicism" in the media.

Senate Majority Whip Lott participated in a discussion of congressional coverage at the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. Media cynicism, which somehow has emerged as journalism's Public Enemy Number One, was taking a drubbing at the session, as it had in a panel on journalistic values that morning.

At lunch Newt Gingrich, the noted press critic, had administered a few blows of his own. And as the congressional panel began, Rep. Patricia Schroeder, hardly Gingrich's ideological soulmate, picked up the theme.

It was left to Lott to provide some perspective. The media, he noted, hardly have a monopoly on the commodity; there's a lot of cyncism in politics and among the American people. Then he came to the heart of the matter.

"The media would be less cynical," he said, "if we'd [Congress] give them something more to deal with."

ýor what's been lost in the current orgy of self-flagellation is why political coverage is the way it is. Journalists didn't wake up one morning and decide to be cynical. What happened is that politics has become a highly manipulative affair, dominated by consultants and spin doctors and deceptive television ads and constantly shifting positions.

When candidates and officeholders behave in blatantly (yes) cynical ways, it's misleading to accept their actions at face value.

What's happened isn't so much that the journalists have changed for the worse. Thirty years ago newsrooms, unencumbered by politically correct speech, diversity issues and concerns about alienated readers, were far more cynical places.

Reality changed.

The view of political figures in Theodore White's "Making of the President" series was far more heroic than the portrait of Richard Nixon and his handlers in Joe McGinniss' "The Selling of the President, 1968." That's not because McGinniss was necessarily more cynical than White. It's because McGinniss had discovered that the Nixon forces had borrowed Madison Avenue techniques to "sell" a candidate, a phenomenon that hasn't entirely vanished from the political stage.

So much of
today's cyncism-bashing is another spin on the age-old practice of shooting the messenger, only in this case the messengers are shooting themselves.

This is not to say that news organizations should not be paying more attention to what government actions mean to people and less to process and insider stories. Of course they should.

It was interesting to hear how a couple of people who cover Congress for a living perceived the cynicism question. William Douglas of Newsday expressed the view that the cynicism of his colleagues wasn't nearly as deep as the popular wisdom would have you believe. He said he thought the tone of much coverage was dictated by the events being covered. "Congress," he said, "has spent a healthy amount of time tearing itself down."

He also didn't seem to see the cynicism outbreak as a threat to the republic: "I don't think it's a cynicism that is crippling our coverage. I don't think it's a cynicism on the media's part that is crippling Congress."

Elsa Arnett, who covers Washington for three Knight-Ridder papers in Florida, said, "The attitude I get from people about Congress is so negative, much more negative than what I and my colleagues feel."

Maybe, it was suggested, that's because they had been corrupted by all of this cynical reporting by Arnett and her colleagues. Not at all, she replied. Most of the Floridians didn't seem to have read much at all about Congress. Rather, they simply had a visceral, generalized sense that it was bad.

The focus of the congressional panel was "Partners & Adversaries," a report written by veteran Capitol Hill correspondent Elaine S. Povich for the Freedom Forum on the "contentious connection between Congress and the media." The report contains, among many other interesting things, a suggestion that could be very helpful for coverage both inside and outside the Beltway: the bold notion that there is nothing inherently wrong with writing a "positive" story.

Everyone who has spent time around a newsroom knows the taint associated with the positive. A flattering portrait is dismissed as a "puff piece," or worse. There is the sense that if you didn't come up with anything negative, you simply weren't trying hard enough. Accentuating the positive is almost a violation of the macho code. It's a sign of terminal naivete.

This is hardly new. It has been deeply rooted in the business for decades.

Of course, there are many stories where the scorn is merited: one-dimensional stories, single-source stories, stories that uncritically accept assertions without checking them out.

But there are times when people and institutions do positive things. And it's just as misleading to underplay or ignore them as it is to avoid the hard-edged coverage that makes it clear when a politician is spinning or puffing.

Once a reporter did a very tough piece. One of the principal subjects was livid; he screamed at the reporter. While she gave no ground, she certainly didn't enjoy the experience. Later she wrote a nuanced story on a sensitive subject. A principal called ˜o say that, while he wasn't pleased by some aspects of the piece, he felt it had been fair, balanced and thorough. Her reaction: Maybe I was too soft.

Musing about her reactions to the two episodes, she remarked, "Maybe I don't know what I want."

zut she really does: to do tough-minded, deeply researched stories – positive, negative or in between – that tell the truth.

That's her job, and journalism's. l