Patriotic self-censorship by journalists (or celebrity reporters) and historians

An article that more than balances Gabriel's Ladeen's shut-up-and-cheer-for-the-wars-I-support piece is Stephen Walt's Reporters, scholars, and patriots Foreign Policy 03/02/2011. He's discussing the admission by some reporters that they self-censor their national security reporting out of patriotism or even jingoism.

Acknowledging the classical case of a need for the press to maintain secrecy in the case of reporting troop movement in a war zone, Walt explains why such patriotic self-censorship is problematic for reporters and scholars as well:

First, it is a common error to equate "patriotism" or "love of country" with deference to or support for the policies of the government. In fact, the main justification for a free press in a democracy rests on the assumption that it will take a skeptical, even adversarial, attitude towards the government and its policies. ...

The second problem with the idea that journalists should let their "patriotism" guide their coverage is that it assumes reporters know ex ante what is really "good for the country." I suspect Judith Miller and the other journalists who parroted the Bush administration's bogus case for war with Iraq thought they were serving the national interest by doing so. In reality, however, they were helping pave the road to a national disaster. When reporters allow a misguided sense of patriotism to interfere with their critical judgments, in short, it is more likely that the "national interest" will be subverted rather than served.

And he makes a similar point about the risk of blowback from foreign policy and how citizens actually need to know about operations that can produce such negative consequences:

Finally, when journalists indulge in "patriotic self-censorship," they by definition end up deceiving their fellow citizens in ways that can be deeply if unintentionally harmful. If Americans are not fully informed about what their government is doing (i.e., because clandestine activities are concealed by the government or by sympathetic journalists), then citizens have no way of knowing how much a military campaign or other foreign policy initiative is really costing us. If we don't know how much the country is doing, we have no way to gauge whether the results are consonant with the level of effort. Equally important, when we don't know what our government is up to, we have no way of knowing why other societies are reacting as they are and we become more vulnerable to "blowback" (i.e., hostile backlashes whose true origins have been concealed). [my emphasis]

The jingo argument that Gabriel Ledeen makes effectively dismisses the idea that citizens should be passing judgment on anything our glorious generals may be doing in the name of "war."

He also makes an important point about patriotic distortion in professional history-writing:

This same principle applies to other purveyors of knowledge -- including scholars -- and sometimes with tragic results. In a classic International Security article ("Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany after the Great War"), historian Holger Herwig showed how government officials and historians in the Weimar Republic actively colluded to whitewash Germany's role in causing World War I. Their goal was to absolve Germany of blame for the war and thus to undermine the Versailles Treaty, and no doubt these Germans believed they were doing their patriotic duty. Alas, their efforts unwittingly reinforced Germany's unwarranted sense of victimization, smoothed Adolf Hitler's path to power, and undermined Western resolve in the face of Nazi revisionism. What they thought was an act of patriotism was actually helping plunge their country--and the rest of Europe--into another terrible war.

Tags: establishment press, stephen walt