Exposing The Get

by digby

I’m with Atrios on this. I have heard some pooh poohing from reporters about The State’s expose of the media bigfoots (and smallfoots) jockeying for interviews with Mark Sanford, because it’s all so very common that nobody should even be interested in such a thing. But the truth is that most people are unaware of this aspect of journalism. When you see the backbiting and ego massaging, you see that it isn’t particularly pretty. More importantly, it shows that there is a “deal making” spirit among journalists that hints rather broadly at a willingness to at least slant things a certain way if not totally tailor their reporting to the specifications of the subject.

I think people want to believe that political journalism is adversarial — crusading muckrakers, speaking truth to power. But mostly it’s a sort of transactional business at best and symbiotic social solidarity at worst. (The Washington Post Pay2Play scandal incorporated all of that and more, putting actual money on the table, which was actually only a difference in degree not substance.)

People don’t really understand how it actually works, at least not in “serious” journalism. For whatever reason, The State decided to break ranks and expose the backstage wheeling and dealing among reporters and their subjects and good for them. Revealing these people whoring their journalistic integrity for “the get” is against the unspoken rules of the game — but it’s actual journalism.

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