Misunderestimating the public: Press gatekeepers may fret about information, but the average Joe is swimming in it.

• Author: MacDonald, Sam

IF YOU'VE SPENT any time perusing the news lately, you might get the impression that the American media are now All War, All the Time. Don't be fooled. Here inside the Beltway, the media continue to scrutinize every possible facet of a topic that even terrorism cannot shake from their minds: the media. Journalists are complaining that outside forces, be they corporate cutbacks or stingy press secretaries, are keeping them from doing their jobs. But if that's so, why is it easier than ever to get information?

Media navel-gazing is hardly new, With so many journalists scurrying about the nation's capital, they naturally get together on occasion to consider how important they are. Before September II, the typical "media forum" went something like this: A few top-level media types would dream up a topic, set out scones and coffee, network for a few minutes, then launch into an hour of introspection about "the role of the media" in this new era of--take your pick-- technology/multiculturalism/globalism/corporate conglomeration/etc. The scones and coffee are still around, but the tone and frequency of these self-examinations have changed dramatically since the terror attacks.

American University convened a typical pre-terror media forum on September 4: "Bush II and the Media: 'Misunderestimating' Each Other?" The title was an irreverent evocation of one of the president's better-known manglings. Panel members included Richard Berke, national political correspondent for The New York Times, David Gregory, White House correspondent for NBC News, and Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent and anchor of CNN'S Inside Polities. In the course of the discussion, panelists traded groans over the 2000 election crisis, the new administration's reluctance to share information with reporters, and the public's nagging affection for unseemly stories in the emerging Monica/Chandra tradition.

Fast forward to a November 12 event at the National Press Club. "American Newspapers: Headlines, Bottom Lines and Covering the War" was that night's installment of the Kalb Report Series, a string of forums named for Marvin Kalb. Talk about gravitas: Kalb has over 30 years in the business, serving as a chief diplomatic correspondent for CBS and NBC, and as moderator of Meet the Press. Now he runs the Washington office of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy. Joining Kaib on the panel were such equally serious journalists as Tom Curley...