Pack journalism

To celebrate Independence Day in the traditional fashion, I read two accounts of the 1972 Nixon/McGovern campaigns, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus. Thompson was more entertaining, no suprise, but arguably more informative, too -- or, rather, he was better able to offer a feel for the campaign. I could almost smell the press bus. Not that that's necessarily a good thing.

Most striking about both accounts, however, was how familiar they seemed. Sigh.

What both also remind us of is how conservative (small c) the Washington press corps was and is. Here's one explanation, from Crouse interviewing Karl Fleming, then LA Bureau Chief for Newsweek, on why reporters were unwilling to ask rude and provocative questions of the Campaign (he didn't mean you, Hunter):

You delude yourself into thinking, ‘Well, if I get on the bad side of these guys, then I’m not gonnna get all that good stuff.’ But pretty soon the realization hits that there isn’t any good stuff, and there isn’t gonna be any good stuff. Nobody’s getting anything that you’re not getting, and if they are it’s just more of the same bullshit. . . . . .

. . . .But while these papers want to have a guy there getting all the inside stuff, they don’t want reporters who are ballsy enough and different enough to make any kind of trouble. It would worry the shit out of them if their Washington reporter happened to come up with a page-one story that was different from what the other guys were getting. . . .The editors don’t want scoops. Their abiding interest is making sure that nobody else has got anything that they don’t have, not getting something that nobody else has.

So eventually a very subtle kind of thing takes over. . . . . .”

If it's just too summery out to read, Alexandra Pelosi's documentary of the 2000 Bush/Gore campaigns, Journeys with George, captures the pack dynamic nearly as well.