Interview with Todd Gitlin, Columbia University Professor, Graduate School of Journalism

July 20, 2004
Transcription by Chris Beiderbecke and Ben Tupper

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself.
TODD GITLIN: I am Todd Gitlin, professor of Journalism and Sociology at Columbia University. And I approve this message.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: From your perspective -- How did the media as a whole perform during the build-up to the war in Iraq?
GITLIN: To generalize, the media performed as they normally perform when it comes to the run-up to war. They are by and large credulous toward official claims. They are by and large scanty with analysis of the arguments that are made in behalf of war. They are in general scanty with the range of views that they permit to speak along side officialdom. They are in general parochial, and give short shrift to views from abroad -- either from supporters, neutrals or opponents. And they have a memory span of about four seconds.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you talk about why -- some of the factors of not covering debate. And why is it that -- It's not that there was a lack of debate, but just that it wasn't being covered.
GITLIN: The conventional idea among mainstream journalists is that their job when they cover Washington is to relay what officials say. They believe that that is their mission, and that any other mission is an intrusion of extracurricular concerns, as it were. That is -- They think that it is not incumbent upon them to press questions, which haven't already been pressed by people who are in the loop. And so, when there are sharp disputes that come to the surface -- and come very close to the surface -- the media are willing to relay them. But in general, they think it's not their job -- Or rather, they think it's a violation of their job to promote concerns, to raise questions, to broach considerations which aren't already in play.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: It seems that when there was controversy, they would say, "There is a controversy." But they wouldn't actually get into the substance of what the controversy actually was.
GITLIN: Well, this goes along with -- I realize I have to rephrase what you say -- Most -- Could we talk specifically about television? -- You know, a normal television news piece is of order of magnitude sixty seconds. The average sound bite during a presidential campaign is now down to about nine seconds. Sometimes a whole sentence is stripped of its beginning and end and reduced to a phrase that's inserted in the correspondent's piece. In a sense, the talking heads are now emitters of quotations for the script written by the narrator. So in this setting, everything is going to be compressed. We won't get exposed to the particulars of arguments. We'll be told -- perhaps, at most -- that there is an argument. Or that something has been called into question. Or that some view is controversial, which of course conveys no information. And it's something that many journalists insert in order to clear their conscience before they move on.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I've talked to some news producers who say that the debate between France and the United States was very well covered, but when I asked them what -- to articulate the French position, they couldn't do it. It seems that -- that that gets to exactly that point. Have you noticed that as well? -- That you have a lot of people who are -- in this particular case -- yelling at the French, but can't actually say what the French position is.
GITLIN: Are you talking about American officials or the reporters themselves?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Either the reporters or -- you know, the officials certainly weren't articulating the French -- they were attacking them. And it seems that some of the stories that the press were doing -- were saying, "Well, it's about oil." You know, "They want the oil." But then, as soon as it came to saying, "Well, Why are we doing it?" And that question wasn't asked at all.
GITLIN: Well, I'd have to go back and look at the pieces to recall exactly what they said about the French. But my memory, for what it's worth, is that -- You got the sense that what the French, the Germans, and others stood for was multilateralism as opposed to unilateralism. But what was the content of that multilateralism? What kind of resolutions were they supporting at the security council? Were they saying "No war ever" or "War as last resort?" In fact, they were saying war as last resort, but I think most -- the conventional idiot paraphrase -- mis-paraphrase would be -- you know, 'That the French were cowards' -- 'Were tricksters' -- 'Were mindless delayers' -- and so on. You wouldn't get a sense of what the actual position was at the U.N.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, great. Now you've said that the beat reporters -- They're kind of driven by the daily coverage. And you've said before that they're "Stenographers with Amnesia" -- Can you talk about --?
GITLIN: That's Jack Newfield's phrase.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Oh, Okay. So can you just talk about the collective memory a little bit -- and elaborate on that a little bit more -- of the beat journalists.
GITLIN: There are -- Are we talking specifically about the White House beat?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah. We can focus on the White House beat. Yeah.
GITLIN: There are more or less knowledgeable White House reporters. Mainly though, they take it as their responsibility to be as Jack Newfield once said, "Stenographers with Amnesia." Even if they do actually know something about the past -- about the record of this or that official, about the policies of the government at other times -- they don't regard it as their job to remind us -- the readers or the viewers -- of that. And instead they confine themselves to what they can get through their precious access. There are exceptions and there are some reporters who are better equipped than others. The boldest, like Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, get punished by the White House and lose what their bosses want above all them to have, namely, access -- or they run that risk. And the White House was very clear with Milbank -- who called distortions "distortions," and lies "lies," and misstatements "misstatements" -- that there's a price to be paid for being too rambunctious. And -- Another problem with the White House beat reporter is that in general, he or she isn't interested in what's on the public record. They're interested only in what's in front of their face. So what's in front of their face is various evasions and nonsensical, on-message repetitions by the White House press office. Rather than the evidence of what's in government documents, statistical abstracts, etc. So what you're getting is a transcription of the surface.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So do you see the influence of public relations has in fact getting more sophisticated and more difficult for journalists to get their --
GITLIN: I don't think there's anything very sophisticated about what the White House press people do. They go out there, and they repeat themselves. And they avoid questions, and they declare -- like servants of Kim Jong Il -- that the president says this and the president says that. And you know, does the president actually know anything about this or that? Well, it's not their business to say. This particular White House is remarkable in that the people who work in it don't even have a background in journalism, in general -- the people who work in the press office. They don't regard themselves as obliged to mediate between journalists and the White House. They're simply standing there stonewalling, repeating empty slogans. And the White House correspondents often -- not always -- but often are dutifully writing them down and repeating them. Now again, this is a large generalization, and I don't want to say that journalists are often -- I'm sorry -- I don't want to say that the journalists in the White House are always doing nothing more than carrying water for the White House. You get strong-to-moderate signs of rebelliousness from time to time. But the problem is that a note of skepticism never translates into the connecting of dots -- the offering of an alternative theory as to what is really going on in the White House. For example, a theory of what was going on before the war of March 2003 was that "The Bush White House, Bush in particular, had been hell-bent on war from the beginning of that administration -- hell-bent on war with Iraq. That they often changed the arguments that they put forward -- or put in first position in behalf of war. But they did not consider contrary positions." That would have been a way of making sense of a great deal of what was going on. And instead, the White House correspondents felt it was their duty to repeat over and over again that 'The White House hadn't made up his mind' -- that 'They were still canvassing for evidence' -- that 'They were genuinely interested in the outcome -- or at least some of them were genuinely interested in the outcome of the inspector's missions' -- and so on. So, Yes. You can get traces of skepticism and a bit of insouciance, but it still represents a surrender to the overarching narrative that's put forward by the White House -- Rather than the offering to the viewers or readers of a range of possible theories as to what's going on. And journalists in general would bridle at the thought that what they're doing is relaying theories. They would insist that all they're doing is excavating facts. But of course, the question of which facts one is attentive to, and how one stresses them -- plays them up, plays them down -- juxtaposes them to other facts -- [Interruption]
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry. Okay. "juxtaposes" --
GITLIN: juxtaposes them to other facts, includes or excludes, or frames, etc. Journalists would be loathe to acknowledge that these are necessities of the trade. So there is a sort of a "clean hands" assumption, which violates common sense, but is the profession's understanding of what it itself is doing. And it's an obscurantist's understanding, but there it is.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And -- it seems, through a lot of what you're saying is that -- They're reporting the events, but they're not really addressing the "Why?" aspect of the "Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?" -- that the "Why?" is something that is -- to this day -- largely left unanswered by the media to informing the public. You have to make inferences as to why this has happened, since things were switching so much. So can you give any insight as to which particular beat -- or if all beats should be trying to answer that question?
GITLIN: Well -- Political reporting does have a conventional answer to the question "Why?" And it is a cynical answer. The answer as to "Why?" -- for example, the President said this or the Majority Leader said that or the Secretary of State said the other -- is that he or she was positioning himself or herself for political advantage. So there is now a stock answer to the question of why anybody does anything. And it has to do with a sort of superficial unmasking -- It's the masking down to the next mask -- which is, of course, the obvious one -- that all politicians are self-seeking, which is part of the truth. But the roundup of the background that would give context to the sense of why this conception of self and why not that one, is "This is very shallow," and curiosity is truncated at a very early stage.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. In some of your articles that you've written, you talk -- you make analogies to the buildup as a sports -- you know, the way that they're covering a sports event -- Can you elaborate on that point that you made?
GITLIN: The networks are in the circulation business. They want attention. It's an "attention-getting" industry. Attention is the valuable commodity that they sell to advertisers. And therefore they are using all of the devices that advertisers use to "brand" themselves and to rivet attention. They're using theme songs. They're using suspense build-up: "Showdown in the Gulf." They're using the whole panoply of techniques to get attention. They're using travelogue features. They're using -- I mean, much of the coverage -- so-called coverage of the war itself through embedded reporters was travelogue. It was -- you know, "Here we are on our way through the desert." I don't think the reporters who did that reporting were dishonest. I think that because of where they were, there was nothing else they could see or hear -- I'm sorry, I drifted away from your question -- I forget what it was.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah, and also just to -- I'm stopping before the war starts. So I'm not getting into as much embedding issues. But the -- You talk about -- If you say, for example, the UN Security Council, a lot of that coverage was "Who's ahead? Who's behind? They're with us. They're against us" as opposed to a lot of the actual debates that were happening. So just kind of elaborate on that.
GITLIN: Well -- No doubt, one of the decisive moments in the run-up to the war was Secretary Powell's presentation to the Security Council in February of 2003 with George Tenet seated as a prop behind him to certify the reliability of this intelligence. And one was hard pressed in the major American media to see scrutiny -- skeptical scrutiny of his claims. Although it wasn't entirely missing, but it was largely obscured. People were impressed by the "encyclopedic nature" -- it was a word used by the -- in the New York Times report on page one the next day -- the apparently 'encyclopedic nature' of the presentation. This was an exercise in horserace coverage. It was like the coverage of a Presidential campaign -- "How well did he do? What was his demeanor? Well, his demeanor was impressive." So journalists were impressed, but they weren't doing journalism -- They were doing transcription. They were doing stenography. And it was very hard for the arguments of criticism to recover and to -- Well, it was hard for the critical arguments to recover after that.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Can you just elaborate on the basic tenets of journalism? To -- Or is it not to challenge power, to ask questions, and to provide all the information to society in order to function as a democratic society? ...
GITLIN: Well, the theory -- Let me start again. The reason --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Hold on a second. Go ahead.
GITLIN: The reason journalism has special protection in the U.S. Constitution -- in the form of the first amendment and the guarantee of the freedom of the press -- is because of a theory of the relation between information and democracy. And it is simply, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." You should know the truth, and therefore you'll be able to deliberate. And therefore you'll be able to govern yourselves, and to hold you leaders accountable. The theory is baby simple. And -- So the premise of democratic theory is that the free flow of information is a better regulator than any government control can be -- The regulation of information is the regulation of potential power. So -- Insofar as the -- As the flow of information is clogged -- either by the malfeasance of the officials or the gullibility or self-censorship of the journalistic institutions -- or because of the self-censorship of the public itself, which is after all is free to transfix itself, to hypnotize itself into a gung-ho mood or an uncritical mood of other sorts -- then this theory has been cracked. The theory's broken down, and democracy is crippled.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk a little bit about -- You mention some of this in your articles about -- you know, the objectivity standard of giving the "He Said / She Said" viewpoint. And in some cases when there is a "right" or "wrong" answer, sometimes the journalists are reluctant to actually dig deeper. And just kind of give both sides and that's it.
GITLIN: Yeah -- The notion that one has discharged one's journalistic duty by reporting what two people have seen -- or say they've seen -- or want you to know they've seen -- is ridiculous. And we couldn't possibly usefully apply this to everyday life. I'm reminded of the old gag about the weather report -- They used to say things like "There's an 80% chance of rain." And somebody is said to have gone down to the weather bureau and said, "What do you mean by that?" And the answer was "Well, there were five of us here, and four of us think it's going to rain." You know, "Well, I think this and you think that" Well, meantime the journalist has an obligation to exercise some authority. And to know something about the situation which permits him to say -- if facts warrant in his view -- that "While some people think it's going to rain, their track record is very poor on this. And anyway, here's some information that they didn't take account of. And therefore, I come to the conclusion that he said nonsense and she said nonsense. Or he said half-truth and she said half-truth." Right? "I, the journalist, am going to do better than simply transcribe what it is these people want you to believe."

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk about what happens when the Democrats and Republicans happen to agree on issues?
GITLIN: Well -- When Democrats and Republicans agree, and all factions within these parties agree or are silenced, then the debate collapses. I mean -- From the point of view of the "He Said / She Said" transcriptive theory of journalism, there is no debate -- there's nothing to talk about. And the circle of legitimacy has been compressed so that only those who fall within the consensus -- that's marked out by all of these -- by this chorus of agreement -- get a hearing.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And so when you look back in this time period of the whole press, the print press and the television press, what do you -- Do you see that there were failures? And what do you attribute those failures to?
GITLIN: I think that the principle failure of the press in the run-up to the war was -- the press and television -- was in accepting the definition of the situation that was promoted from the Bush White House. And that meant departing from the standard of what really matters here in behalf of "What does the administration say?" really matters here. And when you defer to the definition of the situation that's offered by the powerful, who are also the principle channelers of information, then you have already -- you have already surrendered your autonomy. Let me give you a simple linguistic example that, it seems to me, should have gotten more attention. During the whole period in the run-up to the war and during the war itself, we heard over and over again about "the coalition." The coalition was essentially the United States, Great Britain, and a few units from Costa Rica and a bunch of other countries. But the White House continually brandished its list -- its roll of honor, which listed a bunch of other countries most of which were tiny and were offering very little, if any, help. But somehow, over and over again, we were given the impression that what was being assembled to pursue the war was a "coalition." Well, the "coalition" was a fig leaf for the United States of America, and it would have been honest to say so. It would have been reasonable to say, as some did -- in British reporting for example -- that it was a "U.S./ U.K. force" that was being mustered. There are various locutions with which to say this. But by over and over impressing upon the public the notion that the actor in this situation was the coalition, the press was rubber-stamping one of I'm saying, I think, holds whether you think the war was a good idea or not. It's a matter of intellectual honesty to call things out as they are. And I think an honest defender of the war would also have had to admit that it was an American war -- or an American war with British adjuncts. But to call it a "coalition" was to borrow the prestige of Daddy Bush's coalition from the first Gulf War -- and for that matter, the language of allies and so on left over from World War II.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Good. Let's see. Can you talk about bias in the media -- liberal bias, bias towards complexity, simplicity? And what do you see about the biases of the media?
GITLIN: All views of reality come from somewhere. They are not born innocent. They are not arbitrary. They can be more or less accurate. They can be more or less comprehensive. But there are many possible objective views of the same situation. You and I could describe this room truthfully, and accurately, but differently because you're sitting there and I'm sitting here. So there's nothing poisonous about the recognition that honest and objective accounts of the world will diverge. And I think there's much to be said for striving toward comprehensiveness and the largest possible horizon with which -- or from which to understand what's happening before us. But when the world is simplified, as it necessarily is to some degree or other by any attempt to describe it, then there's an obligation to be full in one's treatment of it. And to force -- when it's a matter for example of arguments in behalf of war -- it's wise and democratically imperative to force the exponents of this view to confront the arguments of that view. And to force them to confront each other not at their weak points -- to score debater's points -- but at their strong points, so that a citizen can be honestly educated. By this, very high I grant, criterion, almost all television news coverage fails because what it gives you is a cartoon. To speak of liberal bias is outlandish. There's much evidence of the impossibility of that claim, whether we're talking about how George Bush was treated during the 2000 campaign or the Florida recount or whether we're talking about the treatment of Bill Clinton in office as opposed to George Bush in office. I mean, can you imagine what the media would be doing to Bill Clinton if somebody in his White House had outed a CIA agent? Can you imagine what would be -- the raking through his record that would be taking place? Can you imagine the leaks that would be spilling out from a high holy grand inquisitor prosecutor? Can you imagine how much daily attention would be paid the grand juries that are meeting on this matter as we speak? Liberal bias. This is a canard. This is a fraud that's been perpetrated by right wing fanatics in order to bully the press into moving into their direction.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: What I -- from what I see, is I see that when they look at these claims they have sort of a confirmation bias. They don't do representative samples, they only find the evidence that confirms that belief --
GITLIN: Of course.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: It also seems that they are only looking at domestic issues and ignoring the implications of how they cover foreign policy issues, so --
GITLIN: And even then, only some domestic issues.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So can you elaborate on that?
GITLIN: The claim of liberal bias, insofar as evidence is ever adduced, is generally resting on surveys -- unsystematic surveys of the personal views of journalists. Now journalism is done in institutions. It's not done by freelance free thinkers. And -- If it turns out to be true, that in general -- wouldn't be surprising since the headquarters of most news organizations is in Manhattan, for example -- that the social views of journalists are more liberal on questions like abortion, like gay rights, etc. than the American public as a whole. If that turns out to be true, it doesn't speak to their views on economic questions, which reflect their class identity, which is prosperity -- high prosperity. And therefore it doesn't militate against the fact that on economic issues they may well be conservative. And secondly, the presumption is that television broadcasts are unmediated, loudspeaker system for the private views of the journalists. Which is nonsense. Journalists work in an organization. The editors are giving them instructions. The producers are cutting -- editing the pieces. I've talked to television journalists -- network journalists who are proud of the fact that their own grandmothers couldn't tell from their report which side of an issue they were on, if any. So this is a nonsensical -- but amply repeated, and therefore widely credited view.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk about the editorial process, and from your viewpoint -- What were the editors of the television news, ABC, CBS, and NBC, broadcast television news -- What did they see as important stories to put as the headline, the top news stories?
GITLIN: You mean in the run-up to the war?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Right.
GITLIN: Could you do me a favor? Is there any water in that glass over there?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: There's a little bit.
GITLIN: A little bit will help. I'm sorry. What was the -- What were some of the --?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, I guess -- when I talked to Andrew Tyndall, he -- of the Tyndall Report -- he basically said that this entire build-up was covered as a military intervention. And that whenever information would come out that would give us any idea as to "When the war exactly was gonna start" was valuable information -- enterprise reporting seemed to be centered around that. So just your comments on what the editors, and also the journalists were looking for in the build-up to the war in Iraq.
GITLIN: There was an obsession with tactics.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry, the -- go ahead.
GITLIN: There was an obsession with tactics. I'm reminded about the first Gulf War when a friend of mine at Berkley, I taught at Berkley then, a historian of Islam was asked to come on a radio program. And he did. And the only thing they wanted to know from him was, "When is the ground war gonna start?" He's not a military guy, he's a historian of Islam. There was a similar sort of obsession this time with the minutia of military matters. As soon as war was recognized to be imminent. The questions under discussion ceased to be political questions. Ceased to be questions about diplomacy. Ceased to be questions about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the questions of weapons of mass destruction, and so on. And became tactical questions about positioning. So we went for example, just one that comes to mind, when the Turkish government decided not to permit the United States to -- [phone rings]
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Hold on a second.
GITLIN: It's going to stop soon. I think that's it.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
GITLIN: When the Turkish government decided not to permit the United States to invade Iraq from the north from Turkish territory, we got no sense of what was in play in Turkish politics. This was simply framed as a betrayal of American desires, which would have certain military consequences. But it wasn't a political story. The political experts disappear and are displaced by the military experts, who of course are in general retired generals and admirals who know very little -- or at least have no particular expertise on questions of political ramification, for example, which was always the central question at stake in Iraq.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And the --When you say it went -- became a transition from a political to a military issue, do you have a sense of a time frame of when that happened?
GITLIN: No, not -- I don't remember.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, I'll just throw out some dates, like on November 8th, Resolution 1441 was passed. And that allowed the inspectors to go back in. And there seemed to me to be a blurring of what Negroponte actually said in the council meeting which was that there was "no automaticity" and "no hidden triggers for war," which is what the French were actually using the American statements on the --
GITLIN: Yeah, the French wanted a second resolution, yeah.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Right, they wanted that second resolution. And that when the Pentagon correspondents covered this -- you have David Martin saying that "Now President Bush wants to go all the way to Baghdad." So to them, I think, that seemed to be -- and Campbell Brown said, "Now Bush has received a blank check for military action" which is what -- wasn't an accurate representation of what the resolution was about. But to me the media kind of interpreted that first resolution -- the Bush administration was saying, "We don't need another resolution." And they took that as gospel and said, "Okay, we're going to war".
GITLIN: Yeah, the -- Journalists accepted the official Washington interpretation of every crucial event including, for example, the passing of Resolution 1441 by the Security Council. So then -- History began, for them, with the White House interpretation. And to go back to the resolution's actual wording, to consult with other officials -- with representatives of other governments, or with the U.N. apparatus itself, would have been considered irrelevant -- was considered irrelevant. History collapsed. The multiplicity of the world collapsed. And the sole question brought forward was of the American interpretation.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And it also seemed that there were a lot of questions that could have been asked about this entirely new national security policy, I think you mentioned this, is that there was virtually no discussion about --
GITLIN: You mean the 2002 --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah, September of 2002.
GITLIN: Yeah

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: But it was about to be implemented for the first time. You know, this Petri dish of new foreign policy is about to occur, but there seems to be no sense of -- you know --
GITLIN: You know, I have written about it a lot. But I don't recall what -- I imagine television did very little with it, but I really don't remember precisely. --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Yeah. I guess the -- I guess the --
GITLIN: So I shouldn't talk about it.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: It's a sin of omission, in a way -- to my extent it wasn't --
GITLIN: One of many.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So can you just talk about that -- of the sins of omission of the television news?
GITLIN: Television news, when it chooses, can pay close attention to documents and their omissions, their distortions, their irreconcilability with other documents, and so on. But there's a kind of habit of submissiveness that prevents them from saying, "Wait a minute. How does this document square with that document?" The Bush national security strategy of 2002 speaks about the necessity of what they call preemptive war. Now for preemption to be in play, there has to be an imminent threat. What's the evidence that there actually is an imminent threat? A fair reporting of what's about to take place would refer backward to the claims and arguments of the prior document, which was -- which had the full force of executive proclamation, and not just be obsessed with the latest revelation of the 24-hour news cycle. But the refusal to go backward is a grant of plenipotentiary powers to those who are spewing the line of the day from the White House. So the compressed attention span ends up serving power.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you say, "There has to be an imminent threat," I've seen enough conservative arguments that they would say, "If you look at the public record of the Bush administration they never actually said the two words 'imminent threat.'" So, you're saying that --
GITLIN: Yeah, they were careful not to say the words "imminent threat" -- The mushroom cloud, and all this. I mean, let's get serious here.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, what I'm asking specifically is that imminent threat standard. Where does that come from? Does it come from international law? Does it come from something that's already existing somewhere? Or -- How was it that the press was -- The press were actually saying, "imminent threat"? And from my viewpoint, the administration may have not been saying it. They may have been implying it. But was it because it was being reduced by the journalists to say "imminent threat"?
GITLIN: Well. That's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer. If the White House never spoke the words "imminent threat," it was because they were being extremely careful not to. Just as they rarely said in so many words that Saddam Hussein was so intimately involved with al Qaeda to have been directly involved in the attacks of September 11th. They never exactly said it. But that's not the way they operate. They operate with a hum of implication, and a shadow of -- Well, I'll just leave it at that. They operate with a hum of implication. And leave it to an emotionally gripped and largely uncritical and inattentive audience to follow out the implied logic of their declarations.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I guess this is something that it's really difficult for the media to listen to a speech by President Bush. And if they are, in fact, contriving these implications that they want to send out there without ever explicitly saying so. And then you have the effect of public opinion being affected by people thinking that there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. How is the media -- How are they supposed to counter this nonstop insinuations that are occurring?
GITLIN: It's very easy to counter insinuations. You call attention to the fact that the insinuation is there. And you examine it. I mean, sports announcers don't have any trouble imputing intentions, strategies, and tactics to basketball coaches. "Well, it's clear that they're doing poorly on defense. So now we're going to see them fold into this sort of defensive deployment." I mean, this is done all the time. Motives are imputed to people ordinarily. As I was saying before, there is characteristically the imputation that all politicians are doing is improving their own standing. So it's not hard to do. It's not hard to call these things into question. But it takes the ability to resist the conventional wisdom, the pack mentality, and the habit of submission.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Speaking to pack mentality of journalism, there seems to be some advantages and some disadvantages to that. Can you speak to what are some of the costs and benefits of pack journalism?
GITLIN: Well, journalists are like members of any profession. There needs to be -- It's true for doctors who resisted. It's true for other academics, other groups, academics for example. There's a desire to -- to want -- to achieve the ratification of one's peers. One's peers are the implied audience of what one does. And -- Sometimes that leads to the elevating of standards. At other times, however, it leads to the depressing of standards. And the unwillingness to stick out. So that if one -- if one is a reporter from a midsize paper or a lesser wire service and reports "X" or "Y," one might well find the editor saying, "Well, if this is such a great story, if this is so important, you know, how come the The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal don't have it?" And so, often enough, there is this flattening effect, which works against the higher end of peer review. And in favor of a sort of meltdown of individuality and of variety.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: During the build-up to the war, I was actually present at a lot of the anti-war rallies and was hearing a lot the both, the more off-topic discussions that were happening at the rallies. and the more on-topic discussions. And there seemed to be a mixture. Granted. But also, there were legitimate analytical compressions of what was happening that seemed to be, in hindsight, very prophetic of what was about to happen. Why it was happening. Can you speak to why there seemed to be a not a lot of coverage of the substance of the anti-war rallies? And trying to pick out what they were actually saying?
GITLIN: The media mainly view protest activity as a photo op, as the opportunity to relay an impression of the sort of people these are. But the demonstrators are, in general, held to be embodiments of angles or positions rather than articulators of arguments. Therefore, there's more attention paid to their dress, than to their views. There's more attention paid to what's on their face, than what's in their head. And this is not an exception, but closer to a rule.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Can you talk to overall the influence of imagery and images in television news? And how that drives the coverage?
GITLIN: Well, again. If we understand that the major thing that television news is trying to do is to collect attention, then imagery is the prime means they have at their disposal. And of course, anybody who wants to get on television is going to exploit the desire for the photogenic. So the Bush people are going to set up a proscenium arrangement of Bush arriving on the aircraft carrier to declare that the mission is accomplished. They're going to produce what one of Reagan's people once called our "little playlets." And the media, of course, are in the business of accepting their definition of the photogenic, and letting them produce these "little playets"-- letting them stage at the very least. There's a collaboration in short. There's a desire on the part of the politicians to arrange the show. And there's, ordinarily, a desire on the part of the news media to relay the show. They both have -- they share an interest in the show. They have an interest in making something magnetic. Now, journalism isn't always stuck with that, and there's a lot of restiveness. There's a lot of disgruntlement about the surrender to the public relations strategies of the politicians. And journalists often talk about how to crack the habits -- the bad habits of servility, which have become the pronounced features of their trade. There's a good deal of embarrassment when they do surrender. But nonetheless, there's a momentum, there's inertia, that works in direction of submission. And -- Reporters, in general, will not be fired for their dutiful reproduction of the display put on by the authorities. They might well get into trouble if they deviate from it. Or if they call it too closely into question. If they undo the curtain to show that there's a funny little guy on a box speaking through an amplifier.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: During the month of -- Starting in February or so, even sometime in January, but really in February and March, there seemed to be a lot of enterprise reporting -- Pentagon correspondents, but not from the Pentagon. But they were covering military exercises, more of the training. Can you talk about some of those very salient images that were during that time period?
GITLIN: Well. As the war approaches, in general, and the story ceases to be -- if it was in the first place, political -- and it begins to be military, then, for a variety of reasons, the attention moves to the logistics of training and preparation and location. One reason is obviously that the definition of the story is now military. But a second is the belief that the bond between journalists and their public rests on the public's belief that the journalists have the best interests of the troops at heart. And therefore, the actual physical being of the troops becomes central to the story. So these two motives converge, and there's really not any contradiction between them. And the upshot is that the maneuvers of the troops take center stage.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Is what you're trying to say also a way to humanize the story?
GITLIN: Well, it does put faces on the story. And the faces are, necessarily, given the conventional definition of news, going to be our guys.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Can you talk a little bit about -- Speaking towards the print press, what is your -- You did an audit of the op-ed pieces. And what is your evaluation of the leanings, and the nature of the debate within even the op-ed pages?
GITLIN: It's a curious thing. Often, people who take a distant view of journalism and don't look at it closely, tend to think of it as all of a piece. But it isn't. We're talking about several institutions, often with competing -- and even clashing, interests, that operate under the same roof. So we had this very interesting phenomenon. Here was the Washington Post that was reportorialy rambunctious and forward with scrutiny of White House claims, at least at times, but editorially was quite devoted to the righteousness of the war. And whose op-ed page, instead of conveying a reasonable sampling of views, "for," "against," "neutral," with respect to the war, was heavily skewed "for the war." Then we have the New York Times, which was editorially anti-war, but whose reporting was far more submissive, meek and flat, unambitious, all co-existing within the same newspaper. But I actually did a count of the op-ed balance in the Washington Post in the run-up to the war, and it was outlandishly pro-war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Can you talk a little bit about news as entertainment and the nature of Nielson ratings? And on average the sizes of the television?
GITLIN: The network news audiences have come down considerably since the oligopoly that they shared in the 1960s. And today, there numbers cluster around 15 or so million per evening, per network. Now it's important to recognize that as much as the numbers have come down, and as heavily age-skewed they are toward the elder, still far more people are watching the evening news than watching cable news. Cable news gets a lot of attention from other journalists, and others and people of politically-gauged stripe. But just to put the numbers into some kind of perspective, cable news -- all the cable news networks put together amalgamate to roughly a million and a half, two million viewers, at any given time during the day. As compared to the 40 to 50 million viewers of the three main big network news broadcasts. So I think that gives you some idea of the relative significance. The numbers are coming down. The average age of the television -- the major network news viewer is on the far side of 50. And you can see it by the commercials.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Talk a little bit about the commercials within -- Do you see that there is -- Well, that's an off topic. Just because most of the commercials were pharmaceuticals and not really to the war. Well, any thoughts on the advertising and influence on what is or is not covered?
GITLIN: I think the influence is indirect. The networks assume that they can pick up the older viewers. So they're competing at the margin for younger viewers, and particularly younger women who are the hardest for them to reach. And therefore, this tilts them toward softer news, toward health stories and celebrity stories, and so on. But that's the only influence I'm aware of from advertising slash demographic calculation.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Can you talk about the nature of investigative reporting within television news? Or specifically to this topic?
GITLIN: That's it. What is there to say? There are very few people in network news --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Hold on a second. There was a shift so.
GITLIN: There are very few professionals who do regular investigative reporting on the evening news broadcast. Now, there is a very important role played by the networks in their magazine shows, especially 60 Minutes. The role of 60 Minutes, for example, in retailing the Abu Ghraib photographs is well known. And that's important. We would be far worse off without 60 Minutes, extraordinary phenomenon, a great achievement for CBS. Long may it prevail. The other network news magazines are nothing to write home about.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: David Martin, won an award from Columbia University for his reporting, or at least it was sponsored -- the DuPont Award, and he broke a lot of stories like the "Shock and Awe" story.
GITLIN: What was the "Shock and Awe" story?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, that we're going to drop all these cruise missles on --
GITLIN: Oh, in advance --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- Right, in advance. So he -- So in other words, it seems that the Pentagon reporters are rewarded for reporting on this. And when I asked Lawrence Grossman "Why?" He said, "It's not his job to ask 'Why?'" It's not the Pentagon beat's job to ask why this is happening. So if that's true or if it's not true, then whose job is it to ask "Why?"
GITLIN: It's any journalist's job to ask "Why?" I think there should be strong -- I think there should be awards for beat journalism that goes beyond the ordinary. And goes to probing and historical inquest and out-of-the-ordinary curiosity. I think that's the sort of beat reporting that should be rewarded. Because it's ordinarily not rewarded by the editors or producers. It may not be rewarded by the audience, which may want to cut to the chase and watch the juicy stuff that bleeds. But it's the ACME of the profession, and it needs to be cherished.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And so, what do you see is rewarded? What kind of journalism is rewarded?
GITLIN: You know, I'd have to look and see who's won the -- I mean, The DuPont Award -- The DuPont Awards have gone to some wonderful long-form television productions, like -- what's the name of their company -- Brookes Lapping Company of Britain, which I wrote an article about also for the American Press. But I don't pay attention to their prizes for ordinary beat coverage. So I don't know what they reward.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Do you have any other last thoughts about television news, in general, leading up to the war in Iraq? As you were watching it, any thoughts that were coming to your mind? That stick out?
GITLIN: Not really.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: No? Okay. Great. That was real great.