Is Media justified in its "Attack Dog" style of reporting?

Today's media is certainly not what it used to be back in 1940's and 1960's. Back then the press took politician's word to be true and the government officials, who were the news makers of the time, were able to shape the outcome of the news by presenting an event/story from their own point of view. With the technological advancement a new type of media emerged, such as Blogs, which make it harder for the government to keep their mistakes concealed from the public.

After the Vietnam War and Watergate Scandal in the 1970’s, the press became more critical of the government and started covering in a more cynical and investigative way. Instead of taking the government officials word as final, the media questioned and analyzed the credibility of those statements; even magnifying small slip outs and faults.  

A recent example illustrating Medias’ “attack dog” style of reporting is evident in National Journal’s article published on March 30^th, 2011. The article talks about a GOP Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin that tried to relate to common people whose wages were being cut by saying that he too is struggling to make the ends meet; ironically, with a salary much higher than average person’s.

In a town hall meeting, Sean Duffy said he has a family of seven to feed, bills and mortgage to pay, a minivan, and a student loan that he is still paying for from only 174$K salary that the Congress is paying him. The recorded speech was originally posted on the Polk County’s GOP’s blog but was removed shortly after because Sean Duffy was perceived as “fussing” about his salary in the video. Being that Duffy’s salary is almost 3 times bigger than the average citizens, GOP feared that his controversial statement would attract negative publicity and cause Duffy and the GOP to lose credibility among its constituents.  

The fears proved justified because TPM (one of the most credible blogs today) republished the video after it was taken down by the GOP. TPM released an article titled   “GOPers Demand Sean Duffy Salary Tape Be Pulled from the Internet “which reveals how the local county GOP attempted to strip the blog off its publishing rights by contacting the video provider Blip.tv insisting for the video to be taken down because TPM did not ask for a permission to publish it. Josh Marshal of TPM argued that the party has no right to prevent the disclosure of Sean Duffy’s video because it portrayed the Congressman during one of his public duties. TPM published the video to show the public how out of touch their representatives really are with the lives of common people in Wisconsin and nationwide.

 The people in Wisconsin make at least three times less money than their representatives in Congress and are struggling with rising unemployment and wage cuts that the policy makers implement and are not directly affected by. So I think it is justified that the media zooms in on such slip outs as made by Sean Duffy because they reveal to the public how distanced their representatives really are from them. This in turn can make the citizens want to participate more in politics when they see that they are represented by an elite class that is totally out of touch with them.

It is clear that the Government still tries to be the news-maker and to control the extent to which media can report, as demonstrated by the GOP’s attempts to prevent the republishing of Sean Duffy’s salary video, but considering the critical, “attack-dog” style of reporting the media took on since the 1970’s, it is much harder for the government to keep its faults unrevealed.

I do not support that the press should spy on the politicians and report on their private matters. But I do think that this information republished by TPM is relevant because it shows that the Legislative Branch has no idea about the real effects their policies have on the common people. We would not have someone as Sean Duffy say that he is struggling with 174$K if it was otherwise. We live in a Democracy and elect our representatives freely so If we as the public see that the government is not acting for our good as it is supposed to, we can make a change by voting against them on the Election Day.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/another-wisconsin-controversy-local-gop-stifling-duffy-s-salary-remarks-20110330

(Video included)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOO70Ksf_f0 (Video of Sean Duffy)

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/gopers-demand-sean-duffy-salary-tape-be-pulled-from-the-internet.php

http://www.sodahead.com/fun/do-you-pity-sean-duffys-poverty-at-174k-per-year/question-1632797/ (TPM republished the video after GOP removed it from their websites blog)

Media and Politics

We have discussed that the media, at least in the United States, presides over an undeniable, constitutional right vested in the First Amendment to report freely, without government’s involvement and restriction, on any political news it deems worthy of public concern. After I read the article in The Huffington Post about James Rosin from the New York Times, I realized there are some restrictions to media’s freedom of speech after all.

In his book "The State of War" that James Rosin published in 2006 he talked about CIA's covert mission called “Operation Merlin” in Iran in which a Russian nuclear scientist and a defector was sent to provide Iranians with a nuclear device that had a flaw in its design in an effort to disrupt their nuclear weapon research and prevent them from building an atomic bomb. This mission ended up only improving Iranian’s expertise because the Russian nuclear specialist defected by revealing the built in flaw to Iranians. Based on the information that Rosin wrote about in his book, an article he wrote about the CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling in 2002 and the fact that Sterling was the man in charge during that assignment in Iran the federal officials investigated and charged Jeffrey Sterling for leaking classified information to James Rosin in 2010. The indictment suggested that the government obtained personal records such as credit and bank account reports, monitored James Rosin’s airline travel information and phone calls, and searched his contacts and e-mails just to find out whether he was the one that Sterling leaked the confidential political information to about the government’s spying mission in Iran. The blog Politico confirms that the reporter was heavily investigated by federal officials to make their case against Sterling stronger and Mr. Risen told the website that he felt like a victim in a spying investigation. It is not yet known how the federal investigators got hold of personal data on James Rosin and some speculate that the information could have been obtained through Jeffrey Sterling’s own records but based on the information I gathered from different sources I it is evident that the government was spying on the reporter because how else would they be able to get his travel information and personal credit reports from Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, certainly not through Sterling. According to James Risen’s lawyer, these reports were turned in by the government in a court filing.
It seems that if the media goes ahead and reports a little more than the government wants to reveal about politics, the reporters can be subpoenaed and interrogated about where they get their sources from. This to me is an invasion of an individual’s privacy and a violation of the Third Amendment in the Bill of Rights that protects citizens from such searches and intrusion by the government and it also violates against the valued Freedom of Press we discussed in class. Yes, one could argue that the search the government conducted was warranted because it concerned classified information but the question really remains, how classified is this information that government stubbornly denies? I searched the internet and have not found any documents or reports that explains how classified this information is and whether it threatens the well being of the national security once made public. It seems to me that the common people would be left in the dark if it was not for individuals such as Sterling and Rosen to reveal governments secret activity from time to time because the government conducts these secret missions abroad that could enrage Iranians until they backfire and we would not even know why because we are only informed about the diplomatic attempts the US conducts in an attempt to make Iran stop its nuclear research.  
Obviously the government is trying to make a precedent that will discourage other federal officials from leaking confidential information to the media and this I interpret as an attempt by the government to control media’s access to governments hidden political intentions and activity. On the other hand, being that the book was already published and is available for the people to read shows that media can after all report freely to some extent even if it is at the expense of their privacy being invaded by the government. The fact that James Rosen was able to keep his sources to himself proves that the media does posses certain rights but this case will I am sure discourage other reporters who are less courageous to report on such government scandals and I think this is exactly the goal that government wants to achieve.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/us/29justice.html?_r=1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/25/james-risen-spied-feds-new-york-times_n_828183.html

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50168.html