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On Sunday’s episode of NBC’s Chris Matthews Show (4/3/11), the panel actually talked about criticism of the mainstream media, with some citing the media’s Iraq War debacle as a major factor in the rise of blogosphere-based media criticism.
The discussion got somewhat confused along the way, as this segued into a discussion of the entirely unrelated phenomenon of Republican political candidates who do not like to speak to journalists.
Then the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward weighed in with a solution. He explained that you can get in good with politicians–I mean, do investigative journalism–if you follow his simple advice: Tell your subjects exactly what you’re going to ask them ahead of time, giving them time to come up with answers, and then print their answers.
WOODWARD: I think the survival of the so-called mainstream media has to do with quality. And if you assemble a bunch of questions and go to a candidate and say, “Look, I’m serious. I really want to ask about this,” and you take them as seriously as they take themselves–and believe me, they all take themselves seriously.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
WOODWARD: And you’ve done your homework, they–and you’re fair minded and neutral, they are going to engage. When I’ve done these books on Bush and Obama, I send in–I hate to disclose trade craft here–20-page memos saying this is what I want to ask about.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
WOODWARD: People say, well, you’re telling them–you’re tipping them off. And I say, yes. I want them to do some homework themselves. I want them to be fully engaged. And I think you can do that with lots of work. And–but if it’s just we like to come in and chat about the news of the day, we’ll get stiffed.
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