By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 5.30.02 @ 12:03AM
Is it self-hatred that keeps journalists at each others' throats?
Washington -- There exists at this very moment a carefully held
secret in the American media that has thus far escaped notice by
even the most vigilant media watch-dog groups. Not even the Joan
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy has
gotten wind of it. The media's secret has nothing to do with its
members' political leanings, though since the time of Vice
President Spiro T. Agnew -- he of unhappy memory -- the
conservatives have accused the media of left-wingery and more
recently the left wing has had the chutzpah to accuse such media
tabernacles as the New York Times and the major networks
of right-wingery. No, the media's secret is as hidden from public
eye as the National Organization for Women's grisly initiation
rights or the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's command post. Okay, okay
that was a joke. The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has no command post
(now that it has the White House) and the ladies of NOW only have a
secret handshake.
The media's heretofore unmentioned secret is no joke. At the
expense of being ejected from the press corps and barred forever
from Washington's National Press Club, I shall reveal our secret.
It is this. Almost all American journalists hate every one of their
colleagues; and they do not much like their colleagues' friends or
relatives, either . There are only a few exceptions to this
condition. One is Walter Cronkite. I witnessed his benevolent
presence not long ago at the White House correspondents' dinner,
and he obviously likes many of his fellow journalists. Of course,
he is in retirement and rarely has to spend any time with them.
Possibly there are a few other exceptions to journalists' irritable
temperament syndrome, but most journalists really do hate each
other.
Do you recall Chris Matthews' recent outburst against Ted
Koppel's "Nightline"? And just the other day the learned Bryant
Gumbel expressed very snooty disesteem for the fabulous Katie
Couric. Nor was Matthews' assault on Koppel all that unique.
Koppel's close call with David Letterman evoked sentiments from his
colleagues that, read judiciously, betrayed sheerest joy at his
misery. The newspaper columnists are even more contemptuous of
their fellow writers and of the English language in general.
If the members of the National Football League harbored as much
hatred for their fellow football savages as the journalists harbor
for their fellow journalists, no football game would begin without
a thorough weapons search. The other day, while on his tour of
foreign parts, our debonair President hissed derision at NBC News
correspondent David Gregory's clichéd exaggeration of
Europe's disrelish for him. He said, "So you go to a protest and I
drive through the streets of Berlin, seeing hundreds of people
lining the road waving…." and mocked Gregory's use of French
in addressing an insolent question to French President Jacques
Chirac. In ventilating this impatience George II was merely
exhibiting the American politicians' historic contempt for the
press. Not one of his predecessors really liked the press, except
perhaps for Warren Harding; who considered the journalists his
equals, and with good reason. Yet, most American journalists took
delicious satisfaction in Gregory's humiliation. They enjoy seeing
a competitor chastised. They know he deserves it.
The typical American journalist thinks of himself or herself as
a genius. They think of their fellows as mediocrities and live in
fear that one day the mediocrities will do them in. Hence they
wriggle and squirm to one-up each other. They lift each others'
best work. They pretend that no one else in the press corps has
anything to say that is intelligent or useful and-especially in
their commentary, their columns, and their op-eds-they pop off with
no reference to any other living writer. They bore.
Not all journalism suffers from this self-absorption and
self-contempt. The Canadian and especially the British press is
alive with intramural controversy, one journalist taking issue with
the remarks of another, one paper rushing to the support or the
condemnation of another. There are plenty of personalities within
the British press. When they write commentary they remark on each
other. It makes their writing interesting. It makes their
controversies vivid and genuine.
This brings to mind another secret of the American media. Their
journalists hate controversy. It is the rare American journalist
who will say something unexpected or prematurely accurate. Instead
the American press travels as a herd, but it is not a happy herd.
Its bovine practitioners hate each other.
