This week in Iowa, the first votes were cast on our way to the 2016 election. Much of the campaign coverage seems to focus on the "head-scratching spectacle" that has so far taken the place of serious politics.
Reflections on the news are good — but these days, they dominate the coverage. Our social media feeds are packed with snippets from the day’s events, sensational headlines and alarming quotations, but rarely do these lead to substantial articles that effectively scrutinize the race or the candidates. Having recently read The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013) by Doris Kearns Goodwin, I find myself longing for more depth.
On his path to the vice presidency (and soon thereafter to the presidency, in the wake of McKinley's assassination), Teddy Roosevelt rode a wave of popular enthusiasm for his writings about life in the American West, and for the boldness of his escapades with the Rough Riders. With his extraordinary charisma, he brought an indomitable spirit and unmatched energy to his many causes, including trust-busting, anti-corruption drives and conservation campaigns. He had to take on his own Republican Party to sponsor legislation that would lead to the breakup of the huge conglomerates, represented first and foremost by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. He took a moderate populist position — which turned out to be a successful middle ground between the radical rhetoric of Democrat William Jennings Bryan and the economically conservative message of the Republican establishment — to fight for the little guys who were suffering from the growing divide between the super-rich and the rest of the country. The huge trusts (they were too big to fail) were the main villains in Roosevelt's crusade. As Goodwin writes in Chapter 9:
[Roosevelt] told [Henry Cabot] Lodge he was “surprised to find” that many workingmen who had supported McKinley and the Republicans in 1896 now insisted that William Jennings Bryan was "the only man who can control the trusts; and that the trusts are crushing the life out of the small men." He feared that so long as Republicans failed to develop a cogent policy regarding trusts, those workers who suffered “a good deal of misery” would gravitate toward “the quack,” whose dangerous remedies would undo the benefits of the Industrial Revolution.
Goodwin describes Roosevelt’s trust-busting with an energy that rivals his own. Clearly, Roosevelt was fierce in pursuing his clear vision of what he believed America could be.
Yet it seems to me, and I think Goodwin would agree, that Roosevelt could never have accomplished what he did — most notably rousing the public to force Congress to act — without the strong support of the press, which he may have handled with as much mastery as any president ever has. But even support by the traditional popular press was not enough to bring about Roosevelt’s extraordinary success. It was the rise of investigative journalism, personified by S.S. McClure, that changed the political landscape and generated the wave of popular support for Roosevelt's reforms.
McClure was a visionary who in 1893 assembled around him an extraordinary team of talented writers. They took on cause after cause with well-researched, tightly argued articles of considerable length, in stories that went on for months and even years (not unlike some of the great serialized novels of the 19th century). McClure's Magazine, a monthly journal of reporting, commentary and literature, soon grew to have a huge readership. The political articles featured deep research and careful argumentation, responding to criticism calmly and persuasively, while avoiding the sort of language that aims to excite rather than to illuminate — and thus succeeded in stirring the powerful to take action. Roosevelt befriended, for the most part, McClure and his band of writers, and they in turn embraced many of Roosevelt’s causes.
Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Ray Baker were prominent among McClure's journalists. They became known as “muckrakers” — a term that Roosevelt coined to suit them in a 1906 speech:
There are in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform or in a book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.
The serialized attack on Standard Oil was perhaps the most prominent of the McClure causes. In the first years of the 20th century, as today, income inequality was at the top of the public’s list of societal concerns. The powerful corporations, conglomerates and trusts — Standard Oil among them — justified their enormous profits largely by maintaining that they were using much of their wealth to serve the common good. The lead writer for the McClure series, Ida Tarbell, dismantled Standard Oil’s ethical claims and exposed to the public its unethical business practices. In 19 monthly installments published between 1902 and 1904, she established John D. Rockefeller Sr. and his company as a prime example of the corrupting power and far-reaching influence of the great trusts. Her articles on this subject were later collected into a single volume and published as a book, which became a best-seller — The History of the Standard Oil Company. Her coverage was as balanced as her targets allowed: Where there was evidence of activity in the public interest, she reported it accurately. But ultimately, the weight of the evidence produced its own conclusions. Of Rockefeller, at the time the most prominent businessman in the United States, she ultimately wrote: “Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises.” The public could see the truth through her deep research and clear writing. They saw that their fears about the trusts were well-founded. And they decided to push for curbs on the excesses of the robber barons.
This is the sort of impact that long-form investigative reporting can have on public life. Yet there is little of it today. The life of a news story is a matter of hours mostly, and the really big stories — like the causes and effects of income inequality on the nation’s well-being — are delivered in a desultory manner, without the knockout punch that can be delivered by the hardest-hitting investigative reporting. The Watergate journalism, which took down a president, was half a century ago. The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team — the nation’s longest continuously operating unit of investigative journalists, who uncovered the clergy abuse scandals almost a decade and a half ago — still survives. But there should be more muckraking like Tarbell’s exposé of Standard Oil, not less.
Today’s fears about income inequality center around the major banks that are considered “too big to fail.” And there are certainly other pressing issues of public concern that could benefit from lengthy investigative inquiry — such as the alleged abuse of police power, the role of the gun lobby in contemporary American life, government intrusions into individual privacy rights, global warming and campaign financing. Tarbell’s example shows how this might work with the issue of income inequality.
What if a news organization were to go after income inequality today? What if a serialized story treated, one by one, the most important facets of that issue, like, what are the real causes of income inequality? What are its real effects? What are the principal arguments being made for and against doing something about it? Who is making those arguments, and why? Perhaps, in the course of digging, a characteristic example might emerge — an institution whose story could make the issue clear in the public’s mind. More of this sort of thing is surely needed.
But the need is not being met. And I am not alone in thinking this. The other day, I asked a prominent editorial opinion writer with long experience in government and journalism why this sort of reporting is so rare. He did not contest the premise, but instantly replied that no one is willing to pay for it, because the public doesn’t seem to want it — the readership doesn't seem to be there.
Well, I can’t believe that we are meant to digest the news in 140 characters or less. I work with young people every day who thrive on reading and are passionate about understanding their government. Where can they — and the rest of us — get access to the deep journalistic digging that can show us what is really going on? Do you know a reliable outlet for extensive investigative reporting? What publication do you turn to for a deeper understanding of politics and society? Is there anything that can be done to promote more of this in the modern media?
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