Early this morning, I was awake watching this weekend's edition of "America's Black Forum" (it airs at 5:30 on Sunday mornings in Raleigh) and they were talking about Armstrong Williams (again).
Around the tail end of the show, Juan Williams, who was hosting in the place of JB, asked Deborah Mathis about the connections and opportunities certain journalists receive by the people they cover in accordance to how they report on them or certain issues. Of course, it's well known that politicians cherrypick reporters on television, radio, and print in order to get the one that won't be too hostile towards them and will pitch the softballs they want in order to knock out of the park.
It's quite interesting that he posed this question to Mathis, who is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas and has been covering the Clintons since the 70's. As Slick Willie moved up in the political world, so did she, as she eventually became a national correspondent for Gannett News Services. So when Williams posed the question, it wasn't surprising to see Mathis a bit flustered in her response, saying there's no correlation between the advancement and opportunities given to reporters and the people they cover.
Whether this is right or wrong isn't relevant to the topic at hand. Instead, the image that the media wants the American public to see them as and the one that the American public actually sees are definitely two different images.
The press would like the public to imagine a guy with the old reporter's hat on sitting at his desk pecking away at a mechanical typewriter hurridly trying to beat a printing deadline to get the big story out for the evening paper. Instead most of the public views them as manipulative propagandists rather than honest reporters. Public perception of media bias has been well documented, with a number of opinion polls stating the press slants left. In light of several scandals, including Rathergate, Jayson Blair, and others, the public's trust in the media is
lower than ever.
The Denver Post's Woody Paige, an ATH panelist, now writes from New York so he can appear on ESPN2's Cold Pizza every morning. The unifying theme of Paige's Jan. 2 column was … Woody Paige. "I moved from Denver to New York, had an emergency angioplasty, became friends with Nona Gaye and Joey McIntyre, became a nasty judge on the TV show Dream Job … lounged on a hillside at the site of the ancient Olympics and watched women's shot put, swam in the cobalt-blue sea off Hydra and alongside a dolphin in the Pacific Ocean."
Damn Woody. Must be nice.
Paige is a sports columnist, and not a news beat reporter, which means he has more time than most news reporters to enjoy that kind of lifestyle. But folks like Howard Kurtz can host his own television show on CNN, while reporting on CNN/Time Warner for the Washington Post, something that blogger Mickey Kaus has
constantly criticized.
Perhaps that's why there isn't much hoopla about Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus - in which for the later two, there really isn't any scandal going on at all - outside of the press or in left wing circles. The truth is, the public assumes media figures receive perks like this for simply being in the spotlight. For the most part, they are right.
