‘WH boycotting NYT, WPost good for journalism in unusual times’
New York: The White House threat to cancel federal subscriptions of the New York Times and the Washington Post might turn out to be a good thing for hard hitting journalism in these “unusual times”, Columbia Journalism School Professor Richard John told IANS here.
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ “deep pockets”, John said on Monday, would likely work for the greater good of the journalism trade and neither the Times nor the Post will be “easily cowed”.
The real challenge is the gap between the “presumption” that the newspaper speaks for the country and the actual reality, he said.
As opposition Democrats power ahead with plans for a House vote this week to hard code the next steps of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, the White House has been doubling down on newspapers critical of the presidency.
The White House has cast the standoff as one that “will be a significant cost saving for taxpayers – hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
White House sources have said that the print editions of the New York Times have stopped. It’s unclear when the instructions will go out to federal agencies.
The New York Times and the Post have not yet responded to queries from IANS.
“The New York Times and the Washington Post will do just fine,” John said in the interview on Monday.
“The outcome of this might well be that the editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times recognize that they’re more independent of the administration and therefore (it is) less incumbent upon them to take positions that would appear to be fair, and that could in the end do good, I think. A larger rather than the smaller dose of partisanship may be called for in these very unusual times.”
Professor John spoke with IANS to frame this developing story in the context of his expertise in the history of communiations and American politics. Below are highlights from the interview:
IANS: You have written extensively on access afforded to journalists by political leaders and institutions. The delivery of any newspaper into the White House is another layer of the same access. In the age of the digital platform press, what does the cancellation of a newspaper subscription mean?
John: Symbolically, it means something. President Trump has made it clear that he dislikes Washington Post, New York Times and indeed any media outlets that are critical of him. But once we get past the symbolism and take a longer view, it’s a tempest in a teapot. A couple of considerations: First, when you unsubscribe you often re-subscribe. That happened to President Kennedy when he didn’t like what the, New York papers were saying about him. Second, government staffers get their information about the world from a lot of places including online. I doubt that even President Trump is going to be able to cut down on online access. And third, I think most important historically, is this whole idea that there are two authoritative newspapers, which the President should be beholden to. So let’s go all the way back to the 19th century and an incumbent president in 1828, Andrew Jackson who deeply disliked the coverage of his public life and more generally of public affairs by the National Intelligencer, he shifts government funding away from the National Intelligencer, and another newspaper gets the imprimatur – first, the US Telegraph, and then the Congressional Globe. At that time, the only newspaper that could survive in the capital was largely funded by government patronage. In this way, he (Jackson) was able to fundamentally reshape the media ecology, by shifting government funding of one newspaper to another. Now those kinds of issues are more or less irrelevant today. The Washington Post, New York Times will do just fine without subscriptions from Washington staffers and that says something about the shifting relationship of the government and the press. The press today is much more independent than it was in the first half of the 19th century, and the journalistic firmament has a very different attitude toward government. The outcome of this (stand off) might well be that the editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times really recognize that they’re more independent of the administration and it is therefore less incumbent upon them to take positions that would appear to be fair, and that could in the end be all to the good. I think a larger rather than the smaller dose of partisanship may be called for in these very unusual times.
IANS: Beyond the overt message of a powerful political figure cancelling newspaper subscriptions, what else is going on here? What are the parallels from history, especially at a time when the White House is blanketed by the tumult of an ongoing inquiry or similar messaging crises?
John: It is unusual to have a wealthy individuals billionaires with such a close relationship to influential newspapers in the nation’s capital now. Jeff Bezos will tell you that the Washington Post is independent of Amazon but I don’t think that the relationship is something that is out of the minds of Washington Post staffers. Now, having said that, the idea of wealthy people being influential and owning media outlets is an American tradition. The New York Times is still extensively family owned. The Washington Post was, the Wall Street Journal was until recently. LA Times was owned by an individual family, that can be a guarantee of a kind of autonomy for the newspaper so that is not in and of itself, a red flag. President Trump claims he has deep pockets. Jeff Bezos definitely has deep pockets and that could well work to the benefit of the American people, since we have media outlets that won’t be easily cowed and that is that is all to the good. News does not pay for itself and historically it has not paid for itself. So it’s not surprising that we have these kind of unusual standoffs between one of the richest men in the world and the president who claims to be a very wealthy man.
IANS: The White House offensive against the news media comes at a time where there are plenty of substitute news sources. How does that narrative play out?
John: The idea of a news aggregator is really quite old. What’s different now is that the algorithms are trying to, in effect, scoop up as many eyeballs as they can, for the audience now becomes individual, as opposed to a member of the group say someone who lives in New York City or lives in Washington DC and might have an interest in international news. Until two decades ago there was a presumption that serious news would come to us through newspapers and print medium, which is much older than the United States. And that print media has suffered as you know devastating challenge, because it’s lost its funding source through advertising. The advertising dollars that used to go into the newspapers is now going to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and those are not outlets that see themselves as having an obligation to promote the public good in the way that the New York Times and The Washington Post have and do. That is the existential challenge. But in terms of the news habits of ordinary Americans, we know that that while the time spent with news is going down. It always surprises me the most popular news source for Americans is still TV news. So it’s possible to exaggerate the extent to which everyone’s on their smartphone following the latest scandal or the latest story, but I do think going forward, we need to find responsible ways to fund news, that is being broadcast or narrowcast on social media platforms.
IANS: So, the message from the White House seems to be that, look, let’s not exaggerate the role of two specific print newspapers in today’s news ecosystem…
John: The kind of influence that the New York Times and The Washington Post have come to exert is novel, and in some ways a problem. There used to be multiple daily newspapers in New York in the 1960s; at least seven (unclear) in New York City alone. Today the New York Times, Washington Post regard themselves as national news outlets and the President has helped to reinforce that impression as have other influencers. That is new and that is surprising, and part of the challenge. If you ever assume the mantle of being preserver of the Constitution or say ‘democracy dies in darkness’ as the Washington Post puts it, you have a great responsibility. That’s a kind of responsibility that individual news outlets rarely arrogated for themselves in our past. That is a challenge and the President is, in fact, helping to shape that. The direct audience for the New York Times, Washington Post or for that matter for CNN or Fox News is pretty small, very much smaller than the audience for television news. And so it’s reaching in some ways a niche audience, but it’s a niche audience that is disproportionately influential. And that is a challenge as well, because there’s a gap between the presumption that the newspaper speaks for country or speaks for well informed citizens and the actual reality. And that I think is a challenge as much for the journalists at the New York Times and The Washington Post as it is for the current beleaguered presidential administration.