INSIDE WASHINGTON

Media Insiders Poll

Saturday, April 11, 2009


Editor's Note: This is the first in an occasional series of surveys of influential journalists that National Journal is conducting in conjunction with the Atlantic.

Click here to read how prominent political bloggers responded to these questions.

Q: What do you think of the coverage of Barack Obama so far this year?

Media Insiders (45 votes)

Too tough    7%
Too easy    22%
About right 71%

Too tough
"The coverage is too tough in a shallow way: It is relentlessly negative, but also relentlessly petty, rather than deeply probing. It lacks a sense of history and context, and an appreciation for the complications of taking over the reins of government."

"There is a bit of overcompensation from the positive campaign coverage. But even more, there is the natural tendency of political reporting to overvalue -- by an amount made greater with the influence of bloggers -- the impact of any development, especially a negative development."

Too easy
"Not just too easy, but far too easy. Embarrassingly easy. Fawning. The worst ever in my lifetime."

"I think we're seeing the same phenomenon in media coverage we saw in coverage of [George W.] Bush after 9/11, a dearth of clearheaded reporting that helps readers understand the potential near-term and long-term consequences of policy decisions being taken today. I can't help but think that several years from now people will be wondering why reporters weren't really pressing the administration much harder about policies that will expand the national debt and deficit to unprecedented levels. The consequences have economic, security, and social implications, which have only been superficially explored in coverage I've seen."

"I think by and large the coverage of Obama has been too easy. That was especially true during the campaign and then Election Night. And coverage in the time between the election and the inauguration bordered on the euphoric. Now it's toughening up as the governing process takes hold."

About right
"It's probably between B and C, but it's very early yet. He deserved a honeymoon, after all, which may be about to end."

"The honeymoon period was more intense than usual -- due to the historic character of Obama's win -- but also shorter due to unusually determined and early GOP opposition."

"Too early to see a convincing pattern one way or the other."

"It was too easy, now too tough. It will even out."

"So far there seems to be a balance between sympathy-admiration for Obama the man and the political leader on the one hand, and the D.C. political community's near-irresistible pull toward micro-coverage -- scandal, poll readings, up-and-down. In the long run, I think and fear the latter tendency will prevail, as it generally does. The magnitude of the issues being faced could, however, direct more attention to big questions."

"Although the vicissitudes of the press are ludicrous: One day Obama is FDR, the next day he is Jimmy Carter. He's benefited and suffered from generally overheated coverage."

"As with almost any event short of the landing of an alien spacecraft, Obama's presidency has been hyperanalyzed. The 'how-did-he-do-this-week' profiles mostly shed more heat than light. One area where he got off easy -- till now -- is in the failure of most in the press to ask whether the vaunted 'best and brightest' economic team was in fact operating from the same narrow mind-set as the last team, cosseting the folks who brought us this mess."

"Conservatives are hypercritical, liberals are hyperdefensive, but the mainstream media and moderate commentators are balanced about Obama's initiatives and their risks."

"About right, but struggling to get it right, oscillating between too easy and too tough."

"The coverage has been about right, in the sense that it has been about as it always is: too superficial, too consumed with transitory back-and-forth, not searching enough, and often faintly hysterical in tone. It could certainly be better."

"He's still in the honeymoon phase but, in general, news organizations are doing their job in holding his feet to the fire."

"Some has been pointlessly skeptical, i.e., raising the question, 'Is the president overexposed?' But most has been correct. And some has been making up for skepticism that should have been applied during the campaign."

"Too simplistic, but tonewise probably about right."

"I hate to think that we have to veer between lives of the saints and coverage which overstates the effectiveness and significance of conservative opposition. The cable nets are still living in campaign-and-conflict mode, and that puts pressure on the rest of us. But also, this is another case where our deeply felt duty to cover both sides looks peculiar when the two sides do not have the same weight until we give it to them and change the equation."

"Honeymoon ended sooner than I expected it would. Good for the MSM!"

"Some has been too easy, some has been too tough, and a lot has been ill-informed. But overall, it's probably balanced out."

Q: On balance, has journalism been helped more or hurt more by the rise of news consumption on the Internet?

Media Insiders (45 votes)

Helped more 33%
Hurt more   62%
Both         4%

Helped more
"Smart journalists see diversified Internet news voices as an asset and online venues as an opportunity. Dumb and/or insecure journalists see them as parasitical competitors and enemies. In either case, the erosion of homogenized control over news brought about by the Internet elevates the quality of journalism in numerous ways."

"More sources more often equals good for the First Amendment. The creative aspects of creative destruction almost always represent progress."

"Sure there's sludge, and I can feel overwhelmed by quantity, but the range and quality of what's at my fingertips every morning is astonishing."

"You abandon the conceit that 'newspapers' equals 'news'; you realize that people have far more information available to them about current events than ever before."

"On balance, journalism has been helped more by news consumption on the Internet because more people consume the news than ever before."

"It's subjected journalists to more real-time scrutiny and opened the profession to talented people not affiliated with major media organizations."

"The genie is not going to be put back into the bottle. The Internet has forced journalists to think more about the interests of the audience which, to be sure, has a downside, too. It can crowd out stories that nobody wants to hear about but have to be done."

Hurt more
"The benefits flowing from the tremendous new availability of information have yet to adequately offset the damage that the rise of this new business model has done to the expensive, risky, labor-intensive work of gathering, editing, packaging, and delivering reliable information from places and people that are often hard to get to and unwilling to help."

"The Internet trains readers to consume news in ever-smaller bites. This is a disaster for newspapers and magazines."

"As Paul Starr argues, the product is better for those at the very high end, but worse for those in the middle. And there are far more of the latter."

"It may be the ultimate savior. But in the meantime, it is a giant work-speedup that has stretched intellectual resources and undercut the business model that has sustained the profession."

"The decline of newspapers means fewer journalists are covering the news. Coverage is the basis of journalism, not opinionizing or blogging."

"The cost to the business model -- R.I.P. Seattle P-I -- and the inability of the business model to monetize the Internet mean that there is a disturbing net cost to news-gathering. If you're not covering your state delegation in D.C., or the state legislature back home, or the city council, bad things are going to happen, undiscovered."

"It has blurred the line between opinion and fact, and created a dynamic in which extreme thought flourishes while balanced judgment is imperiled."

"Fact-based journalism has been hurt by the loss of advertising revenue and resources. Opinion journalism has been helped by the explosion of cost-free outlets. In the long run, that's a bad bargain."

"My concern is, first, that with everything free and ads not paying for it, without subscriptions, there will be inadequate money for news-gathering, for reporters, editors, bureaus, etc. My second concern is that the blogosphere is not reliable and perpetuates as many or more myths than news."

"I've always maintained that we benefit from the numbers and diversity of news sources in this country. The Internet is shrinking both those things without providing an alternative which is as good, at least so far."

"News consumption depends on news production. And I don't see anything on the Internet that produces news -- that is, detailed, responsible, empirical journalism -- the way newspapers do, or did."

"The value of quality reporting is being eclipsed by speculation, innuendo, and personal attacks that are made without any editorial oversight."

"The Internet has added to news awareness by Americans; it's invigorated public debate. But it has also undermined and undercut the value of news reporting, as it has elevated opinion. Over 11,000 journalists have been laid off in the U.S. in the past two years."

Both

"Journalism is helped in that good journalism finds a much wider audience thanks to the Internet while flawed journalism is more quickly exposed. But the business of journalism is hurt by the fact that now readers expect to get information for free, and good journalism costs money to produce."

Media Insiders

Fred Barnes, Peter Beinart, Gloria Borger, David Brooks, Carl Cannon, Tucker Carlson, Jonathan Chait, Roger Cohen, Steve Coll, John Dickerson, E.J. Dionne, Sam Donaldson, Bob Edwards, James Fallows, Howard Fineman, Frank Foer, Ron Fournier, Jeffrey Goldberg, Jeff Greenfield, Glenn Greenwald, David Gregory, Mark Halperin, Christopher Hitchens, Al Hunt, David Ignatius, Joe Klein, Mort Kondracke, Ted Koppel, Jim Lehrer, Ruth Marcus, Joshua Micah Marshall, Chris Matthews, Jane Mayer, Doyle McManus, John Micklethwait, Dana Milbank, Markos Moulitsas, Katherine McIntire Peters, Dana Priest, Todd Purdum, Cokie Roberts, Eugene Robinson, Tom Shoop, Roger Simon, Scott Simon, Tavis Smiley, Ray Suarez, Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer, Leon Wieseltier, Juan Williams, Judy Woodruff, and Fareed Zakaria.

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