February 28, 2007

Bob Woodward’s Goals are at Odds with His Methods

According to Bob Woodward, he wants an open government:

"The real impulse is to make the government accountable so we do not get a secret government," Woodward said.

"The nightmare is that the president gets so closed off, so secretive, so convinced they are doing the right thing or just unable to face the possibility that they've made a very, very serious mistake," he said.

But his proposed method - of attacking everything the government does - works to achieve the thing he says he wants to avoid.

The celebrated Washington Post reporter said the media should have done more to verify whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had secret weapons as alleged by US President George W. Bush as a reason to go to war.

"We should have been much more aggressive," Woodward told a conference in Tokyo.

"I've thought what I could have done," he said. "The only way to find out if (weapons of mass destruction) really existed is to get on the ground."

...Woodward's latest book, "State of Denial," takes a critical look at Bush's invasion of Iraq.

By looking only for stories that attack the government, and ignoring stories that show good things the government has achieved, news strategies such as that advocated by Woodward cannot achieve the goal he claims to seek. MSM cannot do its part in having an open government by relentlessly attacking it, and ignoring its achievements.

To do its part in having a government that is open and accountable, the correct approach for MSM would be to print the good news as well as the bad. To take two specific examples, MSM needs to print the good news from Iraq, as well as the bad - and to print the good news about the economy as prominently as its significance deserves.

The government is accountable. The nightmare is that MSM, pursuing policies such as those advocated by Woodward, is not.