Cleansing The System
Lesley Stahl On Free Press
CBS reporter Lesley Stahl (who covered Watergate as a rookie journalist) was interviewed by Chris Matthews on Thursday. Here are a few comments she made on covering government officials and some compelling arguments for the use of anonymous sources:
“You cannot cover the United States government in any deep way unless you accept the fact that the only people who are going to tell you what‘s really going on are people who aren‘t going to want their name revealed.
[If an official speaks out] their job would be on the line if they contradicted the president and the orchestrated line of the day.
Just—was it yesterday or the day before? The president had a news conference. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Richard Myers, the general, all were saying the same thing. That was the point of the day. You know, Iraq is fine. That is—that is what happens in the morning. The line is put out. Anybody who tries to help a reporter get behind that and find out what it means, whether it is true, whatever is being put out, is never going to do it with his name on it.
You‘re never going to cleanse out the system. You‘re never going to figure out who is corrupt and what‘s going on unless you accept you‘re going to have to take anonymous sources.
I was heartened by a poll that showed that Woodward and what he did are viewed by young people as heroes. You know, other systems [of government in other countries] have a lot of corruption. You look at a system that doesn‘t have that kind of penetrating press, free to roam and take anonymous sources and print them, they have a layer of corruption.
This is how we keep our system clean. This is how the United States, after all these years, gets to clean itself out, because the press is allowed to do this and is free to do this. And if people start—the public starts clamping down on our ability to ferret around like this, it is not healthy for the whole system.
To look back and say it wasn‘t in everybody‘s interest to clean out the corruption doesn‘t make any sense. And it was corrupt.”
Many would argue the system needs a good cleansing right about now.
CBS reporter Lesley Stahl (who covered Watergate as a rookie journalist) was interviewed by Chris Matthews on Thursday. Here are a few comments she made on covering government officials and some compelling arguments for the use of anonymous sources:
“You cannot cover the United States government in any deep way unless you accept the fact that the only people who are going to tell you what‘s really going on are people who aren‘t going to want their name revealed.
[If an official speaks out] their job would be on the line if they contradicted the president and the orchestrated line of the day.
Just—was it yesterday or the day before? The president had a news conference. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Richard Myers, the general, all were saying the same thing. That was the point of the day. You know, Iraq is fine. That is—that is what happens in the morning. The line is put out. Anybody who tries to help a reporter get behind that and find out what it means, whether it is true, whatever is being put out, is never going to do it with his name on it.
You‘re never going to cleanse out the system. You‘re never going to figure out who is corrupt and what‘s going on unless you accept you‘re going to have to take anonymous sources.
I was heartened by a poll that showed that Woodward and what he did are viewed by young people as heroes. You know, other systems [of government in other countries] have a lot of corruption. You look at a system that doesn‘t have that kind of penetrating press, free to roam and take anonymous sources and print them, they have a layer of corruption.
This is how we keep our system clean. This is how the United States, after all these years, gets to clean itself out, because the press is allowed to do this and is free to do this. And if people start—the public starts clamping down on our ability to ferret around like this, it is not healthy for the whole system.
To look back and say it wasn‘t in everybody‘s interest to clean out the corruption doesn‘t make any sense. And it was corrupt.”
Many would argue the system needs a good cleansing right about now.
posted by Steve Trumbull | 6/06/2005
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