A celebration of themselves
by digby
Margaret Sullivan wrote a good piece last week on the problems of reporters getting too close to their sources. I have spent years talking about the “Village” culture of Washington, but as she points out the same can be said of the New York finance world, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It’s more than just a problem with doing real journalism, although that certainly a real problem. It’s also the feedback loop between journalists and other elites wherein they all think they represent Average Joe Americans and see their interests as aligning with the middle class. Which they clearly do not.
But there is no greater example of inter-elite schmoozing than the embarrassing White House Correspondents dinner. Sullivan describes the problem exactly:
Several years ago, The Times decided to stop attending the annual White House correspondents’ dinner — a star-studded Washington schmooze fest. At the time, the Washington bureau chief, Dean Baquet, explained: “It had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game.”
Although some have mocked The Times for trying to seem holier than thou, it was a good call. The current Washington bureau chief, Carolyn Ryan, told me she has no plans to reverse the decision.
Mark Leibovich, the Times political reporter who wrote “This Town,” a book about the inbred culture of Washington, thinks The Times was right to stop participating. After all, it’s not just one dinner but pre-parties and post-parties for days on end.
Meanwhile, “the media has never been in lower esteem,” he said. “We’re celebrating what, exactly?”
Well, they’re celebrating themselves, silly. They’re celebrities too, just like Beyonce or Tom and Gisele — or Barack and Michelle. And it’s fairly obvious that this is all a game to (most of) them and they’re all in it together.
As Sally Quinn famously put it:
This particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.
They call the capital city their “town.”
And they forget that it’s our country.
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