Secret Media Dinners are really to Serve the Public even Better Journalism – Really

I can’t say I’m one of those people mourning the demise of many newspapers. That’s a surprise to me personally. I used to subscribe to the New Republic and The Nation, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, U.S. News and World Report, the Christian Science Monitor and a host of other local newspapers.

No longer. Here’s one reason why. Today WaPo has a piece by Howard Kurtz about “The Media Elite’s Secret Dinners.” Unbelievable. Kurtz reports about a series of “off-the-record” dinners with “journalists” and guests such as Rahm Emanuel, King Abdulla II, etc.

For more than a year, David Bradley, the Atlantic’s soft-spoken owner, has hosted these off-the-record dinners at a specially built table in his glass-enclosed office overlooking the Potomac. And the guests, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, are as A-list as they come.

“It’s just a joy for me,” Bradley says. “These are reflective, considered conversations, which is hard to do when you’re going after headlines for the next day’s publication.” While the guests seem quite open, says the businessman who bought Atlantic a decade ago, he is new enough to journalism “that I can’t tell the difference between genuine candor and deeply rehearsed candor.”

What’s to like in this paragraph? “Reflective, considered conversations”? I’m sure the rest of us wouldn’t know how to do that. His guests being “open?” OPEN? I guess this guy thinks he’s getting a side order of truth with that main course of reflection. Heh. I’m not persuaded that politicians will put out for just a meal. If that’s all it takes to get them to tell the truth, we should just turn the Capitol into an all-you-can-eat Kobe beef buffet (or black truffles for the vegetarians).

Kurtz has a few other thoughts.

Still, the catered gatherings also sound rather cozy, like some secret-handshake gathering of an entrenched elite. Are the top-level officials, strategists and foreign leaders there for serious questioning or risk-free spin sessions? And what exactly is the journalistic benefit if the visitors are protected by a shield of anonymity?

The guests “have either been frank with us or provided a reasonable facsimile of frankness,” says Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg. “Would I like for them to be able to go on the record? Of course. But I do think you lose something because then it becomes just another press conference.”

So, they acknowledge the dinners may not produce “real frankness” but feel that at least it’s a more intimate way to get non-answers than a presser? What’s the payoff for the journos? And WTH, if I may say so, is the payoff for the media consuming public?

Bradley, a native Washingtonian, had long been intrigued by the Sperling breakfasts, the 35-year ritual conducted by the Christian Science Monitor’s Godfrey Sperling until his retirement. But those were on-the-record affairs open to any hungry journalist, while Bradley’s dinners are both uber-exclusive and decidedly discreet.

“On-the-record.” Yeah, that’s a little bit different. Hmmmm. Are these the people regularly decrying the lack of “transparency” and violations of so-called “sunshine” laws in government? Discreet, exclusive dinners do not, to me, suggest openness.

Most of the journalists like the [dinner] format, which has allowed for a handful of comments to be placed on the record with the guest’s consent. “The exchanges you have with people in power are so artificial that we wanted to get to know them better and find out what they really think,” says the New Yorker’s Mayer.

Now this is interesting. I think this guy is suggesting that if he knows someone better, how that person thinks, then he can report better on that person. I disagree. Thinking you know someone or how they think is actually a shortcut to doing the work to find out what is really going on. Know how someone really thinks? Well, then you can dismiss criticism of that person. Or you can go on pundit shows and parlay that “understanding” into long editorials about what that person is “really” doing, thinking or planning. Feh. No one knows anyone that well.

Marcus, a Post columnist and editorial writer, says the sessions “have been very valuable, partly because it’s a relaxed setting, not a set of gotcha moments.”

The veil of secrecy has prevented the Atlantic from garnering any credit, at least until now. “I launched it for the romance of it,” Bradley says. “It’s more book club than it is clubhouse.”

“Relaxed setting”, “romance of it,” “book club” atmosphere. This sounds like an affair to me, or at least a tryst. This is not serious journalism. It’s story telling time on many levels. Ripping the “veil of secrecy” so the Atlantic can get some credit? Credit for what?

In most any area I can think of, expensive dinners are not designed to foster a more critical understanding of other people. Knowing what appetizer Ben Bernacke likes won’t make anyone more knowledgeable about his likely position on the economy this week. But sharing a taste for rum-soaked scallops might make one bond with Ben, if just in a small way.

But that creates a feeling of familiarity. And it’s a lot harder to be critical of those we feel we have something in common with. People will tell you that they can write any way about anyone, but as with all complex things in life, it’s a matter of degrees. “Lie down with dogs and you’ll get fleas.” Break bread with a politician; share a taste for gingerbread with caramel sauce and you will believe that guy has, at least, good taste in desserts.

The rest is downhill. I wouldn’t pay $ .25 for anything written as a result of a “get together” like this.