[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 82 (Monday, June 22, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1194-E1195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PORK BARREL JOURNALISM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. NICK J. RAHALL, II

                            of west virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, June 22, 1998

  Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, the term ``pork barrel politics'' has been 
in the lexicon for many, many years and is most often used by the media 
to cast a negative connotation to an earmark by a Member of Congress of 
federal funds for a specified project in his or her Congressional 
District or State. It is my experience that when the media uses this 
term it usually has no first-hand knowledge about the project itself, 
and instead, relies on hearsay to support its contention that the 
project constitutes ``pork.'' This is what I would call ``pork barrel 
journalism.''
  I submit for the Record an excellent example of pork barrel 
journalism exposed by Steven Brill, in the August 1998, edition of 
Brill's Content.

                  [From Brill's Content, August 1998]

                            Quality Control


A U.S. Senator writes a letter to the Washington Post claiming that an 
    eye-catching story about him is completely wrong. What happens? 
                                Nothing.

       Last December, I noticed a curious letter to The Washington 
     Post from Senator Robert Byrd, of West Virginia. The subject 
     was an article that had run in the Post detailing the 
     senator's supposed role in getting a National Park Service 
     project funded in his state--a role the Post cited as an 
     example of lawmakers turning the service ``into their 
     personal pork barrel.''
       Here are the highlights of Byrd's letter:
       ``The very first paragraph of the article speaks of a 
     renovated train depot . . . asking `Why did the National Park 
     Service spend $2.5 million turning a railroad station into a 
     visitor center for a town with a population of eight? The 
     compelling reason--Senator Robert C. Byrd . . . who glides 
     past on Amtrak's Cardinal Limited from time to time, heading 
     to and from his home in Sophia, a few miles south.'
       ``Funny thing, I do not ride the . . . train to and from 
     Sophia and I have never done so. In fact, in the long 
     existence of that train--which does not go to Sophia--I doubt 
     that I have ridden it more than three times, and the last 
     time was probably a decade ago.
       ``Not so funny is the suggestion that the historic 
     preservation of that building and the town of Thurmond . . . 
     would be undertaken as a result of such whimsy. Equally 
     ridiculous is the falsehood that I `slipped' the New River 
     Gorge National River park unit into federal legislation 
     `unwanted' The recommendation to have the New River Gorge 
     managed by the National Park Service was made by the Interior 
     Department . . . [B]ecause of my concern for the costs 
     associated with this plan. . . I have not supported the Park 
     Service proposal for complete restoration of the town of 
     Thurmond. And in the case of the depot, I forced the Park 
     Service to complete the project at a cost conserably less 
     than its original estimate.''
       In short, Byrd claimed that the entire story was totally, 
     even comically, wrong. To which the Post replied . . . well, 
     it didn't Byrd's letter ran without comment. So, who was 
     right?
       Brill's Content staff writer Rachel Taylor reached Martha 
     McAreer an editor of the Post's letters page. No comment from 
     the paper was added, said McAreer, because ``letters to the 
     editor allow readers to voice differences of opinion.''
       Could it really be a matter of opinion whether the senator 
     had actually ridden the train or ``slipped'' the project in 
     ``unwanted;'' by the federal agencies involved?
       A discussion with the article's author, Frank Greve, the 
     respected national correspondent for Knight-Ridder 
     Newspapers, whose wire service had supplied the story to the 
     Post was stranger still. ``So what's the problem,'' Greve 
     began, after having read Byrd's letter, which he told me he 
     had not seen before my inquiry to him. ``He's entitled to his 
     opinion.''
       ``Is it a matter of opinion that he rode the train to and 
     from his home and that that's why the depot go funded?''
       ``Well, I heard he did,'' said Greve. ``And I know he lives 
     near there.''
       ``Is it a matter of opinion that he slipped the bill in 
     unwanted?''
       ``I was told that,'' Greve answered.
       ``Did you call him and ask?''
       ``Sure, I called his office,'' Greve continued.
       ``What did you ask them?''
       ``I told them I was calling because I was interested in the 
     history of the project, so they suggested I call a former 
     [congressional] staff guy because the project was so long 
     ago. He was one of my sources.''
       Greve also pointed out that his original wire service 
     article had included a paragraph saying that Byrd had cut the 
     budget for the depot, but that the Post had cut that section 
     from the version it had published.
       But for Greve to call Byrd to say he was interested in the 
     history of the project rather than to ask specifically about 
     the train rides or about slipping the project into the budget 
     unwanted, is like calling someone and saying you are doing a 
     story about the history of his family when you're about to 
     write that he has been accused of incest.
       Greve finally urged me to call two of his sources for the 
     story--a former congressional staffer and a former Park 
     Service official--on the condition that I not name them.
       The first ``source'' said he had talked to Greve 
     ``generally about the Park Service pork-barrel abuses'' and 
     he ``heard that either Byrd or a West Virginia congressman 
     had wanted to slip the River Gorge project in.'' But he was 
     ``not sure about who it was or even if it was either of them. 
     . . . It was an old story everyone sort of liked to tell. . . 
     . You know, an apocryphal story.''
       The second ``source,'' the former Park Service official, 
     said he told Greve that Byrd's involvement ``sounded right,'' 
     but that he had ``no way of'' really knowing because the park 
     project ``was way before my time.''
       When told of the accounts provided by his ``sources,'' 
     Greve sighed, and then said, in near-disgust, ``Look everyone 
     knows that this is the way the world works in Washington. 
     What's the big deal?''
       Actually, it is a big deal. Most of us think this indeed is 
     the way Washington works, and I know I always thought of Byrd 
     as the embodiment of all that. So a story like this piles on 
     to our preconceived notions and makes us all the more cynical 
     and ready to believe the next story. Conversely, when a story 
     about how the world probably does work, written by a 
     respected reporter, turns out to depend on an anecdote that 
     doesn't seem to hold up, otherwise good journalism is 
     discredited.
       But what may be more important than whether Greve's story 
     is correct, is what happened after Byrd wrote his letter. 
     Which is that nothing happened.
       Greve freely conceded that no one at Knight-Ridder ever 
     asked him about the Byrd letter. Knight-Ridder Washington 
     bureau chief Gary Blonston confirms that ``I never heard 
     anything about a letter.''

[[Page E1195]]

     (Blonston also notes that he was hospitalized at the time the 
     letter was published).
       As for the Post, when shown Byrd's letter two months after 
     he published it, executive editor Leonard Downie said, ``I've 
     never seen it. . . . In fact, I must admit I don't read 
     letters to the editor.'' (As the Post's executive editor, 
     Downie is the editor to whom an aggrieved reader presumably 
     writes; it is he who is responsible for all news coverage.)
       Wouldn't Downie likely see a letter like this from a 
     senator? ``If it were directed to me personally, I think I 
     would,'' He said. ``But if it is just sent to the paper I 
     don't know who would see it on the news side [as opposed to 
     the editorial page editors like McAteer, who oversee the 
     letters page]. I suppose we should systematize that.''
       It is impossible to imagine that the producer of any other 
     consumer product, such as a car or an appliance, could or 
     would ignore this kind of complaint about a defective 
     product, let alone one from someone important. If only 
     because most other enterprises would fear embarrassment in 
     the marketplace or a lawsuit, this absence of basic quality 
     control would be unfathomable. (Greve would win any libel 
     suit as long as he could show he really believed the Byrd 
     story might be true--but that defense for a defective car or 
     toaster would be laughed out of court.)
       So what's important here is that at two of the most 
     respected (and deservedly so) news organizations in the 
     world, the senator's letter was a non-event.
       A footnote: The original Washington Post story generated 
     lots of editorials across the country attacking pork-barrel 
     politics. And, two weeks after the Byrd letter appeared, one 
     of my heroes in journalism--Charles Peters, the editor of the 
     Washington Monthly--cited the Greve article as an example of 
     tax dollars misspent because ``the money was slipped into the 
     budget'' by Sen. Byrd. Asked how he had checked the article, 
     or if he had called Byrd for comment, Peters, who is from 
     West Virginia and knows Byrd, said, ``It would be unheard of 
     that this would happen without somebody's intervention. I'd 
     be incredulous if Byrd wasn't behind it. . . . I guess it 
     could have been a congressman, but I doubt it. But I did no 
     checking because something like this just has the ring of 
     truth.''


                            ``SOURCES SAY''

       Let's have a contest.
       I'll extend a subscription for an additional year to the 
     reader who, by July 15, sends us the news article or 
     transcript of a television or on-line newscast that has the 
     most uses per 100 words of the specific phrase ``sources 
     say.'' The winner and the offending author will be announced 
     next issue.
       We want to stamp out the common use of a phrase that is 
     never defensible. At the least, a reporter can always tell us 
     if there are two sources or 20. Surely he knows. Similarly, 
     he can almost always provide some kind of description of the 
     unnamed source that suggests the source's knowledge or 
     possible bias, even if he cannot be identified.
       The principle is simple and, again, it has to do with 
     quality control for this particular consumer product: 
     providing clear information is an achievable goal, especially 
     when journalists ask us to trust them--and their unnamed 
     sources.
       This reminds me of one of the laziest, most duplicitous 
     things that nonfiction authors do in their acknowledgements 
     at the beginning of a book. Here's an example: ``More than 
     300 people were interviewed for this book . . .'' Doesn't 
     this author know how many? Was it 301 or 33,001? Why can't he 
     tell us? Is 300 a figure of speech? Why trust him with 
     anything else in the rest of the book if he's this lazy with 
     that kind of easy fact?
       That's a quote from the acknowledgements page of a book I 
     wrote in 1978.

                          ____________________