Christopher Willcox's review of Barton Gellman's Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Anyone still interested in the sorry state of mainstream journalism should have a good, long look at Barton Gellman's blistering portrait of Dick Cheney. Despite some labored huffing and puffing over Cheney's behind-the-scenes role on everything from surveillance techniques to global warming, Gellman adds very little that is new to the historic record. What Angler is most notable for is its obvious animus and its disregard for the traditional newsman's separation of church (editorial opinion) and state (fact-based reporting).

Gellman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories in the Washington Post on which this book is based, is a prime exemplar of the new kind of journalism that conflates reportage and opinion in ways that, not long ago, would have outraged news editors. But not only are some of today's senior editors tolerant of such front-page editorializing, they are critical of reporters who don't provide it.

[...]

Angler is neither well written nor particularly instructive on the motives and methods of a vice president who has exercised enormous influence over the last eight years. Much of the material on Cheney's reticence with the press-surprise!-and his conviction that the presidency had been weakened by an overzealous Congress, is deeply familiar. But the volume is a treasure trove of journalistic techniques deployed to bag the quarry.

There is the bogus use of comparative statistics.

[Quote of Gellman's attempt to place 9/11 in context:

For Sept. 11, the National Center for Health Statistics recorded a 44 percent spike over the expected daily death rate, followed by a return to normal on Sept. 12. The year-end tally showed 2,922 lives lost to "terrorism involving the destruction of aircraft (homicide)," a figure that was comparable to the 3,209 pedestrians killed by cars, pick-up trucks or vans. (Non-terrorist homicides exceeded 17,000.) The economic damage was extensive, but no match for the losses of Hurricane Katrina or the subprime mortgage meltdown in Bush's second term.]

Whatever one might think of this dismissal of the September 11 horrors, it is entirely in keeping with the author's apparent conviction that terrorism is essentially a matter for the police and that the Bush administration's response is a greater threat than terrorism itself. "The vice-president shifted America's course," writes Gellman, "more than any terrorist could have done....Decisions made in the White House, in response [to terrorism] had incomparably greater impact on American interests and society."

[Full quote of Gellman's last line above: "These measurements obviously did not capture the full meaning of September 11. A familiar terrorist threat announced itself that day with frightening new proximity and ambition. But decisions made in the White House in response, had incomparably greater impact on American interests and society."]

See the full comments at "Angling for Cheney," PowerLine blog, http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/12/022350.php