Casual
BARNES, FRED
Casual PUFF DADDY Mike Kinsley, while editor of the New Republic, had a half-serious piece of advice for his writers. If you're doing a story about a politician or public official, don't interview...
...This works...
...Mike was onto something...
...I'm not a lawyer, and I'd only been covering the legal beat for about a month, yet he asked my advice...
...Another danger for Washington journalists is flattery...
...That's happened to me more than once, and I instantly felt embarrassed and wished I hadn't written the piece...
...McCurry was simply too well liked...
...Calling up and saying "Thanks for the puff piece" is too crude...
...Yes, he was a deft press secretary for Clinton...
...Such encounters occur all too often and have become a disincentive to pound a public figure in the first place...
...First, the liking problem...
...The most obvious form of flattery is for a public figure to let a reporter know he reads his stories or follows him on television...
...Once, on a year-end-awards show of The McLaughlin Group, panelists were asked to select a "traitor of the year...
...If you're doing a story about a politician or public official, don't interview him...
...There are some people I leave it to others in the news business to zing...
...Either the person is still fuming, which leads to a nasty argument, or he's willing to ignore the criticism and talk amiably, which makes for a hypocritical conversation...
...Maybe there's some group I've overlooked, but my sense is reporters in the national media are the most easily flattered people on the planet...
...This has to be done subtly...
...Fortunately it was a large party, and I managed to steer clear of Mr...
...As a young reporter in the 1970s, I had dinner, along with a handful of other journalists, with the new head of the American Bar Association...
...But it's often done with blatant insincerity, and backfires...
...FRED BARNES...
...And there are other dangers I'll get to shortly...
...The thing to remember is that Washington is a small community...
...Working for a morally handicapped boss and sometimes passing along false information might have ruined his relations with the media...
...Names...
...You might like him, or her...
...Reporters and officials gather daily inside a few square miles of downtown Washington, and efforts to avoid those you've pilloried are never fail-safe...
...McCain is legendarily accessible to the media and spins reporters so cleverly that he seems candid and often actually is...
...But I'll cite a couple of people who've gotten along famously with the press largely because reporters like them...
...Reporters pretend to be tough-minded and aloof, but of course they're not...
...The final danger is encountering a person you've hammered in print or on the air...
...How \ do you think Bill Clinton got ' started...
...Most of all, they want to be regarded as serious reporters, not repeaters—as interpreters of what politicians do, not just transcribers of their comments...
...Mike McCurry is an example...
...I chose Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court, a conservative who'd voted to affirm Roe v. Wade...
...Gathered in a pack JJ they can be cruel and unfeeling, but not when they're on their own...
...I admit to succumbing occasionally (not to Clinton...
...I didn't know whether he knew of the "award" or cared, and I didn't wish to find out...
...But if he'd waited a year, met privately with me, and asked the same question, who knows what would have happened...
...Done properly, which means privately, this can give a reporter a vested interest in a politician's success...
...They want to be seen as individuals, not merely as the latest in a series of faceless journalists to show up from NBC or the Los Angeles Times...
...At the moment, the likability award is shared by George W. Bush and John McCain, rivals for the Republican presidential nomination...
...A few days later, I found myself at the same Christmas party as the justice...
...This disincentive doesn't apply in the case of prominent conservatives like Newt Gingrich...
...Henry Kissinger, while in Washington, was famously good at it...
...Bush is fun to be around, gives everyone, including reporters, a nickname, and is something of a wise guy, which gets him in trouble from time to time but appeals to journalists...
...Justice Kennedy for the entire evening...
...No, the smart way to flatter is to comment en passant about some marginal item buried in the reporter's story or about a throwaway line on a television chatfest...
...Actually liking the person you're writing about—or holding forth about on TV—happens often enough that it's one of the dangers of Washington journalism...
...They want to believe they're an important part of the great political game...
...Reporters trekked to Little Rock, spent a few hours with him, and fell in love...
...They're softies, easily schmoozed, ever susceptible to being fooled by appearances...
...I said my advice was that he not seek my advice...
...And, sure, I like him...
...He was taken aback...
...Another tack is to ask a reporter's advice...
...Didn't happen...
...Sorry, that would be compromising...
Vol. 5 • October 1999 • No. 3
