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KLMNO Olbermann, O’Reilly and the death of real news television from B1


fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, FoxNews and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone. It is also part of a pervasive ethos that


eschews facts in favor of an idealized re- ality. The fashion industry has apparent- ly known this for years: Esquire maga- zine recently found that men’s jeans from a variety of name-brand manufac- turers are cut large but labeled small. The actual waist sizes are anywhere from three to six inches roomier than their la- bels insist. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that we are


being flattered into believing what any full-length mirror can tell us is untrue. But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster.We need only look at our housing industry, our credit card debt, the cost of two wars subsidized by borrowed money, and the rising deficit to understand the dangers of entitle- ment run rampant.We celebrate truth as a virtue, but only in the abstract. What we really need in our search for truth is a commodity that used to be at the heart of good journalism: facts—along with a willingness to present those facts with- out fear or favor.


T


o the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both


fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the “public interest, convenience and neces- sity,” as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communica- tions Commission to suspend or even re- voke their licenses. The three major broadcast networks pointed to their news divisions (which operated at a loss or barely broke even) as evidence that they were fulfilling the FCC’s mandate.


News was, in a manner of speaking, the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions. On the innocence side of the ledger,


meanwhile, it never occurred to the net- work brass that news programming could be profitable. Until, that is, CBS News unveiled its


“60 Minutes” news magazine in 1968. When, after three years or so, “60 Min- utes” turned a profit (something no tele- vision news program had previously achieved), a light went on, and the news divisions of all three networks came to be seen as profit centers, with all the ex- pectations that entailed. I recall a Washington meeting many


years later at whichMichael Eisner, then the chief executive of Disney, ABC’s par- ent company, took questions from a group of ABC News correspondents and compared our status in the corporate structure to that of the Disney artists who create the company’s world-famous cartoons. (He clearly and sincerely in- tended the analogy to flatter us.) Even they, Eisner pointed out, were expected to make budget cuts; we would have to do the same. I mentioned several names to Eisner


and asked if he recognized any. He did not. They were, I said, ABC correspon- dents and cameramen who had been killed or wounded while on assignment. While appreciating the enormous talent of the corporation’s cartoonists, I point- ed out that working on a television crew, covering wars, revolutions and natural disasters, was different. The suggestion was not well received. The parent companies of all three net-


works would ultimately find a common way of dealing with the risk and expense inherent in operating news bureaus around the world: They would eliminate them. Peter Jennings and I, who joined ABC News within a year of each other in the early 1960s, were profoundly influ- enced by our years as foreign correspon- dents. When we became the anchors and managing editors of our respective pro- grams, we tried to make sure foreign news remained a major ingredient. It was a struggle. Peter called me one afternoon in the


mid-’90s to ask whether we at “Night- line” had been receiving the same inqui- ries that he and his producers were get- ting at “World News Tonight.” We had,


KRISTIN LENZ


indeed, been getting calls from company bean-counters wanting to know how many times our program had used a giv- en overseas bureau in the preceding year. This data in hand, the accountants constructed the simplest of equations: Divide the cost of running a bureau by the number of television segments it pro- duced. The cost, inevitably, was deemed too high to justify leaving the bureau as it was. Trims led to cuts and, in most cases, to elimination. The networks say they still maintain


bureaus around the world, but whereas in the 1960s I was one of 20 to 30 corre-


spondents working out of fully staffed offices in more than a dozen major capi- tals, for the most part, a “bureau” now is just a local fixer who speaks English and can facilitate the work of a visiting pro- ducer or a correspondent in from Lon- don.


M obama from B1 The best way for him to address both


our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next twoyears, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the poli- tics of the moment — or of the 2012 campaign. Quite simply, given our political divi-


sions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incom- patible. Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the con- sultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president’s political prospects. Obama himself once said to Diane


Sawyer: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two- term president.” He now has the chance to deliver on that idea.


onwashingtonpost.com 6 I


Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell will discuss this


article Monday at 11 a.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.


n the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke repeatedly of his desire to end the red-state-blue-state divi-


sions in America and to change the way Washington works. This was a central reason he was elected; such aspirations struck a deep chord with the polarized electorate. Obama can restore the promise of the


election by forging a government of na- tional unity,welcoming business leaders, Republicans and independents into the fold. But if he is to bring Democrats and Republicans together, the president can- not be seen as an advocate of a particular party, but as somebodywho stands above politics, seeking to forge consensus. And yes, the United States will need nothing short of consensus ifwe are to reduce the deficit and get spending under control, to name but one issue. Forgoing another termwould not ren-


der Obama a lame duck. Paradoxically, it would grant him much greater leverage with Republicans and would make it harder for opponents such as Senate MinorityLeaderMitchMcConnell (R-Ky.) —who has flatly asserted that his highest priority is to make Obama a one-term president—to be uncooperative. And for Democrats such as current


Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — who has said that entitlement reform is dead on arrival — the president’s new posture would make it much harder to be inflexi- ble. Given the influence of special inter- ests on the Democratic Party, Obama would be much more effective as a figure


uch of the American public used to gather before the electronic hearth every evening, separate


but together, while Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith offered relatively unbiased accounts of informa-


tion that their respective news organiza- tions believed the public needed to know. The ritual permitted, and perhaps encouraged, shared perceptions and even the possibility of compromise among those who disagreed. It was an imperfect, untidy little Eden


of journalism where reporters were mo- tivated to gather facts about important issues.We didn’t know that we could be- come profit centers. No one had bitten into that apple yet. The transition of news from a public


service to a profitable commodity is irre- versible. Legions of new media present a vista of unrelenting competition. Adver- tisers crave young viewers, and these young viewers are deemed to be uninter- ested in hard news, especially hard news from abroad. This is felicitous, since cov- ering overseas news is very expensive. On the other hand, the appetite for strongly held, if unsubstantiated, opin- ion is demonstrably high. And such talk, as they say, is cheap. Broadcast news has been outflanked


and will soon be overtaken by scores of other media options. The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic in- terdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a nation- al audience receiving news from a hand- ful of trusted gatekeepers; we’re now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-mind- ed providers. As you may know, Olbermann re-


turned to his MSNBC program after just two days of enforced absence. (Given ca- ble television’s short attention span, two days may well have seemed like an “in- definite suspension.”) He was gracious about the whole thing, acknowledging at least the historical merit of the rule he had broken: “It’s not a stupid rule,” he said. “It needs to be adapted to the reali- ties of 21st-century journalism.” There is, after all, not much of a


chance that 21st-century journalism will be adapted to conform with the old rules. Technology and the market are offering a tantalizing array of channels, each de- signed to fill a particular niche—sports, weather, cooking, religion—and an infi- nite variety of news, prepared and sea- soned to reflect our taste, just the way we like it. As someone used to say in a by- gone era, “That’s the way it is.”


SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010


The case for a transformative one-term presidency


“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a


mediocre two-term


president.” President Obama, in an interview with Diane Sawyer in January


PHOTO BY MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES


Then presidential hopeful Barack Obama speaking in Raleigh,N.C., onMay 2, 2008, four days before the state’s primary. To recapture the promise of that campaign, the president could announce he is setting politics—and campaigning—aside for the rest of his term in office.


who could remain above the political fray. Challenges such as boosting eco- nomic growth and reducing the deficit are easier to tackle if you’re not constant- ly worrying about the reactions of senior citizens, lobbyists and unions. Moreover, if the president were to


demonstrate a clear degree of bipartisan- ship, it would force the Republicans to meet him halfway. If they didn’t, they would look intransigent, as the GOP did in 1995 and 1996, when Bill Clinton first advocated a balanced budget. Obama could then go to the Democrats for tough cuts to entitlements and look to the Republicans for difficult cuts on defense. On foreign policy, Obama could better


make hard decisions about Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan based on what is reasonable andresponsible for theUnited States,without the political constraints of


a looming election. He would be able to deal with a Democratic constituency that wants to get out of Afghanistan immedi- ately and a Republican constituency that is committed to the war, forging a course that respondsnot totheelectoral calendar but to the facts on the ground. If the president adopts our suggestion,


both sides will be forced to compromise. The alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. While we believe that Obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 mid- terms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided Americans in ways that still plague us. Obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign.


Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and indepen- dents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. Now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012. Should the president do that, he—and


the country—wouldface virtuallynobad outcomes. The worst-case scenario for Obama? In January 2013, he walks away from the WhiteHouse having been trans- formative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. He will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic re- covery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to


our international challenges. He will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. History will look upon him kindly —and so will the public. It isnosecret thatwehave been openly


critical of the president in recent days, but we make this proposal with the deepest sincerity and hope for him and for the country. We have both advised presidents fac-


ing great national crises and have seen challenges from inside the Oval Office. We are convinced that if Obama immedi- ately declares his intention not to run for reelection, he will be able to unite the country, provide national and interna- tional leadership, escape the hold of the left, isolate the right and achieve results that would be otherwise unachievable.


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