No Cheering in the Press Box, Please

Here we go again.

These days, the mainstream media are openly cheerleading for the rebel forces in Libya. Before that, they were in love with the demonstrators who occupied Pearl Square in Bahrain. And before that, the protesters who brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak. And even before that, the crowds who sent Tunisia’s Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali packing.

Forgive me, but I’m gagging at all the gushing.

Without defending any of the Middle East’s more despotic rulers, is it too much to ask for a little straight reporting? Journalists tend to fall in love with a good story, and the revolution sweeping the Arab world is a great story. But openly taking sides, which is what has happened repeatedly in recent weeks, diminishes the reporting and the reporters.

It’s a familiar phenomenon, a kind of journalistic puppy love with arresting images and appealing characters. They have been in abundance in the Arab revolt, from the vendor who set off the Tunisian tumult to the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo, to the 70-something American woman defending her apartment with her rolling pin and big knife.

NBC’s normally professional Brian Williams and the estimable Richard Engel were positively giddy as they larked through Tahrir Square among the protesters. It was a party, a picnic, a love-in. Most of all, it was Great TV.

When it was learned that CBS’s Lara Logan had been stripped and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square, the pro-democracy forces didn’t seem quite so admirable. But by then, Mubarak was gone and the camera’s eye had shifted to Bahrain’s Pearl Square. Then it was on to Yemen, briefly back to Tunisia, and then, suddenly, to a new story: Libya! Tobruk had been liberated, now Benghazi! Tripoli must be next! Gaddafi can’t last long.

But now Gaddafi is fighting back and what seemed at first to be an irresistible popular revolt is turning into a grinding civil war. It is going to take a while before this story plays out. And even longer to see what develops in Egypt.

Extraordinary winds of change are blowing through the Arab world. Sclerotic regimes are collapsing. It is huge news, so let’s treat it with the professionalism and independence a truly monumental event deserves.

No cheering in the press box, please.

OBAMA IN THE CROSSHAIRS

OBAMA IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Barack Obama is getting hell from the left and the right for his handling of the people’s revolution in Egypt.

Critics on the left, like Niall Ferguson, in a new column in Newsweek today, argue that the President should have pulled the rug from beneath Hosni Mubarak and openly aligned the U.S. with the protesters in Tahrir Square from the outset.

Critics on the right, like Glen Beck and others, chastise Obama for failing to publicly support our “ally” Mubarak .

Since Obama did neither, Obama’s performance is being dubbed a “foreign policy debacle” and a “colossal failure.”

Wrong, on both counts.

This was a case, not uncommon in diplomacy, where ambiguity was the highest and best use of the bully pulpit. If the President had come down decisively in favor of the protesters, it would have pushed Mubarak out all the more quickly. But it would also have given the revolution a “Made in America” label and stripped it of its legitimacy.

Instead, the President spoke repeatedly of the need for an orderly transition that would accommodate the legitimate desires of the protesters and all Egyptians. Going forward, he should do exactly the same thing. Rather than endorse this candidate over that, or even this general over that general, the Administration should stick to the principles of democracy and openness and equality.

If the U.S. adopts and stays with that posture there is a chance — just a chance — that this extraordinary, grass-roots revolution will result in elections and a democratic government later this year. It is crucial that the outcome be seen as the choice of the Egyptian people, not that of Washington-based foreign policy commentators from the left or the right.

EGYPT AT THE CROSSROADS

EGYPTIAN PATIENCE WEARS THIN

“We are a river country,” an Egyptian friend once told me when I marveled at his country’s patience with corrupt, incompetent and repressive regimes. “We go on and on.”

Perhaps. But that legendary patience with the bumbling but stubborn, 82-year-old President Mubarak seems to be wearing out.  Change is coming to Egypt, either very soon or shortly thereafter. And what happens in Egypt matters, to Egyptians, of course, but also to the U.S., Israel and the entire Arab world.

Diminished as it may be today, Egypt remains the centerpiece of the Arab world. With its population of 80 million, it is not only the largest Arab country. It is historically, culturally and intellectually the heart of the Arab crescent from Morocco to Lebanon. An old saying in the region is that there can be no peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors without Syria, and no war without Egypt. It is still true today. No surprise that President Obama chose Cairo for his first major speech on relations between the U.S. and the Arab and Muslim world.

But now Obama confronts the ticklish task of encouraging change in Egypt without seeming to abandon the Mubarak government .  Egypt has served as a crucial counterweight to Syria and Iran. It has received tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. aid over the years and carved out a cold but diplomatically important peace with Israel. As Egypt goes, so go Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The stakes are enormous.

FROM BAD TO WORSE….

FROM BAD TO WORSE…..

The thoroughly botched firing of Juan Williams as an analyst for NPR has claimed another victim, exposed management weaknesses within the organization and launched a much-needed review of NPR’s muddled non-policy for what its reporters and analysts can and cannot say on other media outlets.

The latest victim is Ellen Weiss, the respected senior vice president for news, who was forced to resign and take the fall. Weiss was the executive who fired Williams last October with a late-night phone call after he played into Bill O’Reilly’s hands by saying on Fox News that he became “nervous” whenever he boarded a plane with passengers dressed in “muslim garb.”  That gratuitous personal observation — feeding  O’Reilly’s ongoing tirade about Muslims — violated even NPR’s vague guidelines against its people expressing their opinions on controversial topics on other media outlets.  It was also the kind of racial and religious profiling that Williams rightly has long campaigned against when applied to African-Americans.  An independent review of the firing by an outside law firm concluded the obvious: i.e., that NPR was within its legal rights to dismiss Williams — and that the firing was “mishandled.”

No kidding. The controversy provoked an avalanche of protests from listeners and led to the latest Congressional move to cut funding for public broadcasting.  It also provided an opening to Roger Ailes, the Republican political operative who runs Fox News. He seized the moment to reward Williams with a new, $2 million contract as a full-timer at Fox.

The only good news in this whole mess, other than the boost to Williams’ bank balance, is that NPR has launched a serious review and revision of its ethics guidelines. That will presumably result in an overdue clarification of just what its people should and should not say when appearing on other outlets.

The answer is obvious: reporting, analysis and commentary are three distinctly different functions, whether in print or on the air.  The first states the news, the second analyzes its meaning  and the third expresses an opinion.  The first two are fine on NPR or any other outlet. The third is also fine, but must be clearly labeled as commentary by a commentator. NPR broadcasts commentary every day. I have contributed some such myself.  In this as in so many fields, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

Juan Williams, incidentally, was an NPR analyst, not a commentator. I am sure he understood the distinction, but he chose to blur the line during his Fox appearances.

It is now up to NPR to redraw the line as part of its ethics review — and enforce it.

CHANGE THE MESSAGE…

The announcement today that Robert Gibbs will be replaced as White House spokesman is evidence that President Obama has realized – finally – that he has to upgrade his message machine. The first step in changing the message is changing the messenger. But Obama himself will have to put more effort into communicating what he is doing and why he is doing it. In his post-election press conference, he acknowledged that that task had been neglected in his first two years and that he had paid a price for it. Hence, the famous “shellacking.”
One of the great mysteries of the first half of the Obama term is how one of the best communicators in politics failed to get his message across. We’ll see if that changes now.

A DYING BREED

FAREWELL, JACK

There was a memorial today for Jack Nelson, the great civil rights reporter who served as Washington Bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times for 21 years and was a familiar face and voice on Washington Week in Review on PBS. It was an extraordinary gathering that will be replayed on C-Span at 8 p.m. EST tonight.

There have been too many memorials of late among reporters and their friends in Washington: Jody Powell, Bill Safire, John Mashek, just in the last few weeks.

But today’s event in the auditorium of the National Geographic Society in Washington was remarkable as a reminder of that special breed of reporter, most of them born in the south, who grew up personally and professionally covering the civil rights revolution. It was the seminal story of their time and they brought it home to the nation at large.

Several outstanding examples of the breed were in the audience today: Eugene Patterson, Gene Roberts and Howell Raines among them, along with some of those who fought the fight, including Rep. John Lewis and Julian Bond.

Gene Patterson recalled that Jack Nelson came to his job with a “high school education and a low boiling point” about the injustices he saw inflicted on African Americans in the south. He quickly proved to be, Patterson said, “the scourge of crooked sheriffs and thieving statehouse politicians” all over the region. Gene Roberts recalled that Jack took on the Klansmen he encountered, “pointing his finger at them like a pistol” as he questioned them.

Jack’s story and those of other reporters like him are recounted in “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and Awakening of a Nation,” which Gene Roberts wrote with Hank Klibanoff in 2006. It is worth a read, or a re-read, as a way to understand the careers and commitment of this dying breed.

WALTER AND DON

WALTER AND DON

First, Walter Cronkite, dead last month at 92. Now Don Hewitt, gone today at 86. It is being described as the end of an era at CBS News.

Of course, the Cronkite-Hewitt era at CBS ended years ago.

In their day, CBS News was truly a world-wide news-gathering organization, with correspondents in bureaus around the globe. The news division was a prestigious loss-leader that fulfilled the network’s public affairs commitment and kept the FCC at bay. Founder William Paley was happy to pay the division’s bills because it gave him license to run the advertising-rich entertainment shows that brought in the dough.

Don Hewitt ruined all that. By doing news in an entertaining fashion, he established 60 Minutes as a run-away ratings winner and cash cow. The conglomerates who took over CBS after Paley — Westinghouse, Loewes and Viacom — realized that news broadcasts didn’t have to lose money. So, they 1.) cut costs; and 2.) converted each news broadcast into a profit center. The shows that made money survived. Those that didn’t disappeared.

“It’s all my fault,” Don Hewitt told me in an interview I did with him five years ago for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. “60 Minutes was such a success that management decided that all news broadcasts could and should make money.”

To that end, the bean counters closed foreign and national bureaus, dismissed staff and let go half the correspondent corps. The news division that survives still has outstanding producers and correspondents, it still does good work, but more and more it is a news-packaging, rather than news-gathering, organization.

No one relished television news more than Don Hewitt. His enthusiasm was boundless and infectious. He was one of those producers who had 35 ideas a day, 34 of which were impractical, silly or outlandish. But one good idea a day is an enviable record.

He built a terrific repertory company of correspondents and made them into stars and millionaires. A few from the Hewitt era continue — Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Andy Rooney — but the era, the Cronkite-Hewitt era, if you like, is long gone.

Walter and Frank

The worlds of journalism and literature lost two of the good ones over the weekend.

Walter Cronkite and Frank McCourt shared some of the same qualities: a sure sense of who they were, what they were about and what they wanted to accomplish. Walter came by his inner compass early and easily. He knew from his teen-aged years that journalism was for him and he pursued it steadily, in print, for a wire service, on radio and, at a time when it seemed like a risky venture with an uncertain future, in television. By the time he became the Most Trusted Man, he had a thorough grounding in news. Television brought out his inner ham, but he never lost his sense of integrity. He was as steady at the helm of CBS News as he was on his beloved sailboat.

I knew Walter mainly as a family friend. We sailed together on Martha’s Vineyard and I enjoyed listening as he and my father swapped stories over drinks in the evening. He was retired by the time I got to CBS News as a correspondent in 1985, but the News Division was still the House that Murrow built and the institution that Cronkite had guided so steadily.

He had stepped down from the anchor chair voluntarily two years before, mainly to make way for Dan Rather, but within a year he knew he had given up that perch too soon. He still had the energy and interest, and he was offended by the cold shoulder he got from CBS. But Walter was a classy guy above all, and he kept his second thoughts largely to himself. It was only in his later years that he publicly shared his dismay over the dismemberment of CBS News in the Tisch era and the general decline of television journalism.

Frank McCourt was famously a late bloomer, a writer who found his literary voice in his late 60’s after a full teaching career. But once he had written Angela’s Ashes, even before it was published, he knew he had discovered what he was meant to do. He told me that he had filled 40 small notebooks with recollections of his childhood and that he had to get the story out of his system. “I would have died howling,” he said, had he not set it down.

The memoir made him famous and wealthy. He never lost his amazement at that, or his sense of irony. “I’m an expert on everything now,” he told me with a laugh as he accepted an invitation to go to Ireland for a conference on the history of U.S.-Irish relations. “Didn’t you know?”

I profiled him for CBS Sunday Morning when Angela’s Ashes had just come out and before it was such a huge hit, tagging along with a camera crew when Frank and his brothers returned to Ireland for the first time together. There were some inner tensions and competition among the Brothers McCourt, Frank, Malachy, Michael and Alfie, but a shared sense of irreverent humor as well. They laughed at everything, even the stony graveyard outside Limerick where they had scattered their mother’s famous ashes and the former British Army barracks where they had played pranks as boys. It was a glorious trip.

I did another television interview with Frank a few years later when his second memoir, “T’is,” was published, this time for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The second volume never matched the commercial success of his first, but he was pleased, nonetheless. “You see?” he said, laughing, “I’m not a one-trick pony after all.”

We became friends in the years after that, sharing the occasional dinner with our wives in New York and Washington and a weekend at Notre Dame, where he saw his first big-time college football game. “That was grand,” he said, after the music of the marching band had died out (and USC had killed Notre Dame,)”a real extravaganza!”

Walter and Frank — I’ll miss them both.

OBAMA AND THE CHESAPEAKE

OBAMA AND THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

President-Elect Barak Obama has been famously channeling Abraham Lincoln as he prepares for his inauguration.

This weekend, he’ll take a train, as Lincoln did, from Philadelphia to Washington. Next Tuesday, he’ll be sworn in on the same bible that Lincoln used and enjoy a lunch in the Capitol of Lincoln’s favorite dish of scalloped oysters. We can only hope that the 44th President’s passage through Baltimore is less fraught than Lincoln’s — the 16th President had to be spirited through Charm City in the dead of night for fear of assassins.

Aboard his train from Philadelphia, Obama will cross the Susquehanna River and get a close look at the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay. He’ll see pretty homes along the shoreline and boats under winter covers in the marinas. If it is a bright day, the Chesapeake will be gorgeous, as it usually is.

What the President-Elect will not see, and cannot be expected to appreciate looking out the train window, is just how troubled the Chesapeake is today compared to Lincoln’s day. In 1861, the Bay was clean and at the height of its reputation as an immense protein factory, providing millions of bushels of oysters, blue crabs and rockfish to feed the growing population of the United States. Perhaps a million people lived in its vast, 64,000-square-mile watershed. Most were farmers.

Today, the harvests of crabs and oysters are a tiny fraction of their historic highs. The Chesapeake is polluted, its water cloudy and, in places, dying. A quarter-century after the first inter-state agreement to clean up the Bay, officials recently conceded that they cannot meet even the modest goals they set for themselves back in 1983. The best estimates are that it will take a decade and some $19 billion dollars to clean up the Bay and restore to anything close to what it was like in 1861.

When his train arrives in Washington, President-Elect Obama will be besieged by demands for money — to fix the economic crisis, to put out the fires in the Middle East, to close Guantanamo, to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.

Restoring the Chesapeake understandably will be far down on that list of urgent priorities. But it deserves the new President’s attention because it has reached, if not passed, the tipping point. Some 17 million people live in the watershed today, an estimated 170,000 more move in every year and developers are busy paving it over to accommodate them.

We have reached the point where only the Federal government can salvage the nation’s largest and most important estuary and make it into a model restoration for the rest of the country. We now recognize that the voluntary efforts to clean up the Bay over the last 25 years have stalled but not stopped the deterioration. It is time to replace them with mandatory controls, beginning with revisions to the Clean Water Act. Congress will have to do that, and the President will have to push to get it done.

“Save the Bay,” is the slogan on the bumper stickers that Barack Obama will see around his new home. Let’s hope he adopts it as his own.

TERENCE SMITH is a former correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He lives on the Chesapeake Bay. His website is terencefsmith.com

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT

The most remarkable thing about Barack Obama’s remarkable campaign was his personal consistency.

In his victory speech last night before 100,000 cheering fans in Chicago’s Grant Park, he was the same composed, confident, understated, serious Barack Obama who came out of political nowhere to win the Iowa caucuses. That personal composure, a kind of inner grace, is his hallmark.

At a moment of exaltation, when he could have been forgiven for a letting it rip, he held himself in check. Even as the applause rolled over him, he stood there, alone, collected, secure.

“I hear you, I hear your voices,” he said to those who had supported John McCain. Indeed, it is his ability to listen, almost more than his eloquence as a speaker, that distinguishes Barack Obama.

From the beginning of this endless campaign, he sensed clearly that the American people were repelled by the fractious, bitter tone of political discourse. They were tired of the character assassination and negative attacks that characterize campaigning today, and more than anyone else, Obama understood that.

In the face of every provocation from Hillary and Bill Clinton and later, John McCain and, especially, Sarah Palin, he kept his cool. Even after the Republican convention, when his campaign seemed stalled in place and his closest supporters were urging him to lash out, to fight back, to show some emotion, Barak Obama continued on the same, steady, civil course.

He seems to have an almost perfect ear for the American political mood, a kind of political GPS that tells him where people are and where they want to go.

Nothing seemed to get to him, not the nonsense about his supposed friendship with the now-famous “washed-up terrorist,” William Ayers, not the racist ravings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, not the Republican ads labeling him a socialist and Marxist. Obama answered or explained each, but in his own, measured, quietly-confident way. Somehow, he sensed that that would be enough to blunt the attacks, and that to go further, to lash out, would be too much.

This serene, unflappable manner served him well in the debates: not just the 19 with his fellow Democrats during the primary season, but more importantly, the three against John McCain. The 47-year-old Obama looked presidential, while the older, more experienced McCain came across as angry and erratic. People who were uncertain about Obama up to that point decided, yes, they could see him in the Oval Office after all.

It will be fascinating to see how the Presidency changes him. It ages everyone. And the challenges facing him are extraordinary. But that internal compass that guided Barack Obama through the campaign is likely to serve him well.