Kalb is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. A distinguished TV journalist for 30 years—and now director of the Washington office of Harvard's Shorestein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy—Kalb (The Nixon Memo;
etc.) decries the decline in standards he now finds in a profession he loves. He presents a detailed account of how journalism debased itself with a feeding frenzy in 1998, when l'affaire
Lewinsky first broke. Television and newspapers' new motto became "All Monica, All the Time." Few reporters, however, really knew much about the story, and they were all too willing, according to Kalb, to report gossip as news, innuendo as fact, without finding reliable sources. Reporters even became sources in a "prairie fire of copycat journalism." A rumor would appear on the Internet, particularly the Drudge Report, and be picked up by a TV reporter, who would in turn be used as a source by a print journalist. So, whether eventually substantiated or not, stories of a stained blue dress or a witness to a Clinton-Lewinsky tryst, or allegations the President told Lewinsky to lie were all fed into the sordid national discourse. The problem, Kalb finds, is that the corporate concentration of ownership of news pushes the bottom line above all else. And with the proliferation of news outlets, especially in cable TV, reporters must titillate rather than teach in order to compete, to draw in viewers. Kalb's report on reporting is an engrossing and disturbing story of what happens when integrity gives way to expediency. (Oct.)
Forecast:Hopefully, the news media won't be so stung by Kalb's sharp criticism that they ignore it—and media attention should help this important study sell well.
