The press: Still missing on AWOL

It seems apparent that, to the press corps at least, the questions about George W. Bush's military record have been at least mollified if not answered. Problem is, nothing has been answered.

Prototypical for the sudden disappearance of the AWOL story from the radar screen was Tim Russert's handling of it on Meet the Press the other week, when he said:

The president has now released all his military records. General [sic] Calhoun, who was in Alabama, said he observed him coming to duty on weekends in Alabama. Should the Democrats withdraw the charge of AWOL towards George W. Bush?

This was, of course, a fairly typical softballs-for-Republicans performance from Russert. As the folks at Spinsanity remarked on this obfuscation of the matter shortly afterward:

... [A]s Russert should know, the evidence shows that Calhoun's claims appear to contradict those of the White House. As the Houston Chronicle pointed out, Calhoun claimed to have seen Bush a number of times in summer and fall 1972, but records released by the White House do not credit Bush for service until late October.

What very few people in the press have remarked on so far is the fact that the White House's release of Bush's "complete" records in reality has some substantial gaps in it that do not answer any of the serious questions raised so far. This is especially the case regarding Bush's failure to take a flight physical in 1972, which has never been adequately explained.

As fascinating as the questions about Bush's records might be -- even as it becomes increasingly clear that Bush has been grossly misleading the voters about those records -- the most disturbing aspect of all this has been the behavior of the press in its handling of the story.

This has, in fact, been true from the get-go. Reporters dropped or ignored the story in 1994 and again, especially, in 2000, and for no apparent reason other than that the story didn't fit the scripts that dominated the storylines at the time. The script in 2000, you may recall, was that Bush was a "straight shooter" while Gore "made stuff up."

The press simply has failed to delve past the Bush team's consistent obfuscation of the records issue. That has resulted in the story's persistent half-life, floating around the periphery of news coverage, staying alive almost purely because of its steady circulation on the Internet -- and then erupting, almost bizarrely, for about a week's worth of feeding frenzy after Democrats finally decided to put the card on the table. And then, just as suddenly, the story drops off the screen -- even though the White House's response has been just as devoid of any kind of serious explanation of the questions raised as before.

This up-and-down kind of coverage clearly reveals a dysfunction in the nation's press, as Mimi Swartz recently outlined in the New York Times:

In Search of the President's Missing Years

Over the past few weeks, President Bush has responded to recurring questions about his National Guard service by saying that the subject is old and tiresome. According to Mr. Bush, reporters conducted a thorough investigation of his time in the Texas National Guard when he ran against Ann Richards for governor in 1994, and again when he ran against Al Gore in 2000. The complete Guard records, the president told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," were "scoured."

This came as news to me, as I lived in and reported from Texas during those times and feel that questions about the story -- Mr. Bush's life story -- linger 10 years after his first political victory. Why they linger is a more complicated question, one that has as much to do with the press as it does with the president.

What the AWOL case demonstrates is the extent to which the nation's press has developed a real vulnerability to manipulation by propaganda -- one that has always existed, but which has come to dominate media behavior under the weight of simultaneous changes in the industry and the ideological playing field.

On the one hand, media conglomeration has rendered the bulk of the nation's news organizations essentially bottom line-oriented organizations with only a passing glance at their role in protecting the public interest. Investigative and consumer-oriented journalism, both of which are expensive, time-consuming and not always rewarding -- and both of which have the decided disadvantage of frequently embarrassing the business friends and associates of ownership, as well as potential or even current advertisers -- have always been the first to go in cutbacks, and such work is now a rarity in most newsrooms. Meanwhile, political reporters are increasingly forced to rely on press releases and canned statements, and many simply lack either the time or ambition to pursue stories that aren't handed to them. Real ombudsmen, at the same time, have become rarities as well.

At the same time that the nation's newsrooms have been gutted, they have fallen under attacks from the "Mighty Wurlitzer" -- the right-wing media attack machine that on the one hand attacks mainstream news organizations for "liberal bias" merely for publishing non-conservative viewpoints, while themselves engaging in the crassest kind of bias and spin that distorts reality and fabricates false "facts."

The culture in most newsrooms now has created a de facto conservative bias, simply because no one wants to counter the popular memes emanating from the Wurlitzer, since to do so runs the risk of being suspected of "liberal bias."

So when Team Bush decides to stonewall on their candidate's military records, no one has much incentive to push harder. Only a few reporters challenge the Team's fairly obvious fabrications: Do you recall, for instance, anyone asking Ari Fleischer or Dan Bartlett about the brazenly false first explanation for the missed flight physical (which was that Bush's personal physician wasn't available -- even though all such physicals must, in fact, be administered by an Air Force flight surgeon)?

Then, when the Democrats finally decide to raise it as an issue, the press erupts in a mass feeding frenzy as they realize that the gaps in Bush's records really haven't been adequately explained. But the frenzy, like most such phenomena, is all fizz and little substance; most reporters, with only a shallow understanding of the facts of the case, miss the key element (the physical) and focus on red herrings (whether Bush actually served in Alabama). When two Guard vets suddenly pop up with stories corroborating Bush's presence in Alabama -- even though their dates don't match up with those supplied by the White House, and in fact assert he was present in Alabama when the record is quite clear he wasn't -- the pack suddenly decides that the questions have been answered, even though in reality nothing has been answered definitively at all. And the story goes away.

This is simply an abysmal job on the part of the press, and suggests the way that the right-wing Wurlitzer functions to suppress serious investigative work about the Bush administration, mainly by intimidating reporters inclined to do such work. On one hand, it endlessly intimates that such questions are part of an enduring "liberal bias," while at the same time endlessly repeating the White House's dodges.

It doesn't take much imagination to know how the Wurliter -- and the press -- would have reacted had these kinds of questions been raised about, say, Al Gore or John Kerry, both of whom served honorably in Vietnam. It would have been a nonstop circus of conjecture (it would have been "irresponsible" not to speculate, of course) and accusation, all with the purpose of impugning the Democrat's character. House and Senate investigations would have been called.

And the press would have gladly played along, almost eagerly manipulated. Makes for good cable ratings, dontcha know.

What the case demonstrates most clearly, though, is that when journalists fall down on the job now, regular citizens -- empowered by this new medium of mass information dissemination -- are more than capable of doing their work for them.

Think about the way the AWOL story stayed alive: By the work of a handful of regular citizens, non-journalists, who doggedly kept filing FOIA requests and publishing their results on the Web. Chief among these is Marty Heldt, the Iowa farmer whose Web site remains one of the significant repositories for Bush's records. The Iowa press, of course, has steadfastly ignored his contributions, even though he has been interviewed by everyone from CBS to CNN. However, the paper in Davenport finally decided to profile him recently:

Area man key source on Bush's Guard record

Think about how Marty describes the way he got involved:

Heldt does not seem to mind his anonymity. What he says he did mind was the little attention the issue got four years ago when Bush was running for president. "This was an amazing story. I thought, 'Why isn?t anybody talking about it?' " Heldt said in a recent interview.

Mimi Swartz, at least, holds out some hope that, now that the story is in play, it will not fade entirely from view (and indeed, there is some likelihood that James Moore's book, due out this summer, will contain some fresh revelations):

In some ways, then, the president is right: questions about his military service have been raised every time he's run for office. But it's also true that the story still seems woefully incomplete and that there have been clear inconsistencies in the answers Mr. Bush and his associates have given about his time in the Guard. (Mr. Bush's associates said that he didn't take his 1972 military physical because his doctor in Houston was unavailable and that he lost his flight status because the plane he was training on was phased out -- statements that have been shown to be debatable at best.) It's also disconcerting that each election cycle comes with a new set of "complete" documents.

Perhaps 2004 will be the year that details of George W. Bush's time in the National Guard -- indeed, his life in the early 1970's -- finally get filled in. This time around, there are certain factors that might put added pressure on reporters, editors and news organizations to complete the story. After all, the questions about Mr. Bush's service are being raised while we are at war and while the president is facing a genuine war hero as a potential opponent. Maybe this year, 10 years after Mr. Bush's first political victory, the lingering questions will finally disappear.

The story might finally be resolved, but the issue of the way the press has been manipulated throughout this episode will not. As long as journalists are willing to let themselves be propaganda conduits, putty in the hands of Machiavellian conservatives, instead of acting as independent reporters of fact, it will remain.

There is simply no counterpart for the Mighty Wurlitzer on the left, though there has been talk about creating a left-wing counterpart to the right-wing talk radio and television presence. I remain skeptical that simply imitating the tactics will be adequate -- and believe that alternative strategies, such as building an entirely different communications infrastructure based on the Internet, hold much greater promise in terms of countering the right.

But the people opposed to the conservative movement's agenda and its ruthlessness in enacting it have at least one thing going for them. They have, for the most part, the facts on their side. That in itself won't ensure victory, but it is a good place to start.

As for the press ... well, it's nearly impossible to even know where to start.