Book Review of Helen Thomas’s Watchdogs of Democracy?

As I read Watchdogs of Democracy? written by Helen Thomas, at times I felt the greatest crime of President Bush was his failure to charm her. The way she writes of state dinners as if it were her senior prom, describing her “long, black velvet skirt, with a matching jacket, and a fancy satin or silk blouse.” Bush did not hold enough of these events because he “liked to go to bed early and also because he was a total teetotaler.”

The lack of state dinners aside, Thomas believes President Bush was committed to going to war, willing to lie to bring it about. She saves some of her harshest criticism for the journalist who covered the events leading up to the conflict—from Colin Powell’s speech at the U.N. and George Bush familiarizing the American public with yellowcake. Knowing the power the media has by deciding what constitutes news and thereby defining the debate, Watchdogs of Democracy? was about the media conceding that power to play the offense to the White House.

As the title of her book suggests, Thomas considers journalists to be the “watchdogs of democracy.” Thomas writes, “Without an informed people, there can be no democracy. It is the job of reporters and editors to ask the tough questions of those in power and to act on the answers with trust, integrity, and honest guiding their judgment.” The romantic portrait of the journalist Thomas paints in the opening of her book does not mirror reality as we know too few journalists are actually up to the task.

To her credit, Thomas admits the industry is not above reproach. The scandals plaguing the news industry in the past couple of years are highlighted. From the lies of Jayson Blair, the Bush National Guard Memo, and the “yellow” journalists of the past, these episodes of plagiarism have not done much to restore the public’s trust in the media in the midst of accusations of bias. Thomas misses the opportunity to explore why journalists decide to lie. She only briefly blames it on “money, ego, and laziness.” (She couldn’t even explain why Jayson Blair spells his name like a porn star.)

The biggest failure of the American media lately has been their treatment of the Iraq War. She felt the media “…lapped up everything the Pentagon and the White House could dish out—no questions asked.” Reporters refrained from asking the serious, tough questions because they feared being labeled unpatriotic.

Reminding the public she was always skeptical of the connection between Iraq and terrorism by publishing excerpts of press conferences, Thomas cannot be relegated to being characterized a Monday-morning quarterback. The only problem is that the same individual appear almost hypocritical being so condemnatory of the New York Times and Washington Post when she admits she wish she were more “vigilant and skeptical” of the Nixon administration. Reporters make mistakes and are human also. It seems silly now the media trusted President Bush, a man whose biggest sin was mispronouncing nuclear, over Sadaam Hussein, who gassed the Kurds.