Journalism is back!

Or at least it WAS back…for nearly a month

We may have just witnessed the most consequential and effective period of the mainstream media since Watergate

I was a child when the major media outlets in the nation marshaled their forces to take down Richard Nixon. But as a journalist and a student of the discipline, I am very familiar with the process and the manner in which it happened. As such, I can tell you what we saw the last three-and-a-half weeks was the closest parallel available since those Halcyon days of the early-to-mid seventies.

The Washington Post was the lead agency, of course, with legendary reporters Woodward and Bernstein having established and curated a network of informants with critical information…information that was doled out in sometimes semi-dramatic fashion. It was where the term “deep background” was established.  That means that the reporter is not allowed to identify the source OR the information they offered.  Instead, they were supposed to use that information to find the next piece of the puzzle.

Every two or three days a new feature story would appear on page one, above the fold. Each one of them with information that slowly but surely advanced the trail from a high-rise Washington Hotel to the White House. It was like watching a slow-speed car chase, with a dogged pursuer willing to play the long game in order to bring home their quarry.  It made for compelling reading.  It also made for some excellent journalism.

We saw hints of this tenacity over the past three-and-a-half weeks.  And it made me nostalgic.

The media had dutifully covered for their favored politician for the past three-and-a-half years. They had not been this incurious about White House affairs since, well, the last time one of their favored politicians served as Commander-in-Chief. Stories about President Joe Biden’s lack of sharpness were relegated to right-wing media.  That was purposeful.  If the sanctified mainstream media ignored something, and you could only find it on Daily Wire or The Blaze; then the haughty denizens of the Mainstream Media could cavalierly dismiss the information as “right-wing propaganda.”

I will admit to being amazed at the quickness and the ferocity of the media’s about-face following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late-June. The nanosecond that they determined that Biden was damaged goods, that he was unlikely to win re-election, his good time press buddies turned on him faster than a WWE heel.

What followed was like reliving Watergate, with its near-daily updates to an ongoing story.  Each day seemingly brought a new and interesting chapter in the saga.  And these stories were not spun out of whole cloth.  The mainstream media apparatus (like Woodward and Bernstein did) used the same network of contacts that they had developed to parcel out information on the President’s condition.  Reporters who had been running cover for the White House, wholly incurious about Executive Branch affairs since January of 2021, turned into rabid journalistic animals---spitting out deep background information like it was 1974.

Of course that ended abruptly on Sunday when the President (or someone else) informed the nation that he would not seek re-election. The same 180 we saw after the press determined that Biden could not win repeated itself.  Instantly, the President’s health was no longer an issue, despite the fact that he evidently plans to carry out the duties of the most important job on the planet for the next six months.  No, the press’ mission was complete.  A candidate with a better chance of winning was now in place.  Instantly the stories turned to the quick endorsements of Kamala Harris.

So no.  I offer no hosannas to the mainstream media for doing their job the past month or so.  That’s because they acted, as usual, entirely out of their own self-interest.  They didn’t pursue truth for the sake of truth.  They pursued truth because it was the best way to make sure their favored candidate wins in November. If that goal could have been attained by maintaining their Obama-era levels of incuriousness, they would have done so.

What this all proves is that there still exists the capacity for actual journalism from our mainstream media. You just have to offer them the proper motivation.  Of course, since that motivation is entirely predicated on political views, what follows is not really “journalism,” is it?