PressEthic

As I watched a commercial for "60 Minutes" promoting the release of a new damning book about the Bush administration from star-journalist Bob Woodward, I felt like I was in a time warp. The commercial featured images of Woodward, with what seemed to be a Mike Wallace narration, giving Woodward credit for uncovering that the Bush administration has been lying to the American public. How is this news? And why, of all people, is Woodward getting the credit?

This was going to be the topic of my blog post, but it seems that Arianna Huffington beat me to it.

Then there was the revelation, breathlessly delivered by Wallace in his intro, that after two years and more than 200 interviews, including "most of the top officials in the administration," Woodward has come to "a damning conclusion: That for the last three years, the White House has not been honest with the American public." Stop the presses, hold the front page! And burn all the copies of "Fiasco," "Cobra II," "The One Percent Doctrine," "Hubris" -- plus 99.9 percent of the blog posts on Iraq that have appeared on HuffPost since we launched -- that have previously come to exactly the same "damning conclusion." Why fork over $30 for much-older-than-yesterday's news?

As Huffington points out in the blog, Woodward recently released two books about the Bush administration: 2002's "Bush at War," and 2004's "Plan of Attack." Both books were heavily supported by the White House and included some rather flattering descriptions of Bush's leadership.

But in those books, Woodward saw things a bit differently -- which would explain why "Plan of Attack" was given the top slot on the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign website's recommended reading list (ranking even higher than Karen Hughes' Bush-adoring "Ten Minutes from Normal"). And why Woodward, even in the wake of Abu Ghraib, could be found on Jim Lehrer in the spring of 2004 mooning over Bush's "moral determination, which we've not seen in the White House maybe in 100 years" and announcing, sounding like a TV car pitchman, "People want a tough president, and this man is tough."

I should note that there is some irony in this post, as Huffington is no stranger to switching political allegiances herself. She even describes herself as a former right-winger. But back to the topic at hand.

Why is Woodward's book getting so much recognition, if there doesn't seem to be much news value to it? Is the news value only that Woodward, a man smitten with the way Bush seems to run the White House, wrote the book? Is it only interesting because of who said it, over what he/she said?

Why, in the end, does the media fall prey to prominently displaying Woodward's "conclusions?" How come Woodward has not been criticized by the mainstream media for capitalizing on the president's low approval rating, when he gleefully jumped on board of the U.S. media cheerleading campaign at the beginning of the war?

Still, even as he basks in the media glow, Woodward is safe to not burn all of his bridges with the Bush administration. Another Huffington post comments on Woodward's appearance on the "Larry King Live" program, in which he was asked:

King: One of our key staff members wants to know if you think we can trust George Bush. Woodward: You know, that's a good, interesting question, but I don't address it...it's not my job.

Huffington questions this last notion, as I do. How exactly is that not our job, as journalists? If you write a book describing the instances in which Bush and his administration have repeatedly lied about the war in Iraq, how is that not the obvious conclusion? Would it make Woodward, or any journalist, biased to make such a remark, even if grounded in hard facts?

To me, Woodward's latest book is an example of journalistic trepidation. Instead of publishing this book three years ago, when it would have had a larger impact and truly uncovered some secrets, Woodward comes out with it much after the fact. And instead of using the facts in his book to make a larger more damning statement about Bush, Woodward instead stays out of the discussion, hoping not to further anger an administration which has, until now, been one of his biggest allies.