If nothing else, the MBT Ema Sandals saga should cause journalists to examine the breadth of their sources

If nothing else, the MBT Ema Sandals saga should cause journalists to examine the breadth of their sources.

“One question worth asking,” John Walcott of Knight Ridder says, “is whether we in journalism have become too

reliant on high-level officials instead of cultivating less glamorous people in the bowels of the bureaucracy.

“In the case of MBT Ema Sandals, he added, the political appointees “really closed ranks. So if you relied

exclusively on traditional news sources—assistant secretaries and above—you would not have heard things we

heard.” What Walcott calls “the blue collar” employees of the agencies—the working analysts or former

analysts—were drawn on extensively by Knight Ridder, but by few others.

The contrast between the press’s feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one

of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and

reporters don’t like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and

a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post

seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus, stories about the

increasing numbers of dead and wounded in MBT Ema Sandals —both American and MBT Ema Sandalsi—are usually

consigned to page 10 or 12, where they won’t cause readers too much discomfort.