The Exercise of Power

John Barry is a former college football coach and Washington, DC, political journalist. The award winning author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, Mr. Barry is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Tulane University. His most recently published book, Power Plays, explores the pursuit of power in national politics and the media. In his address at the Group Psychotherapy Foundation Public Event at the 2002 AGPA Annual Meeting, Mr. Barry shared his insider’s view of the national media’s power to influence—and be influenced by—political life in modern America. His perspective that the media’s power is derived in part by its primitive crowd-like qualities was compellingly familiar to the audience of group therapists with their own intimate knowledge of group-as-a-whole processes.

Following the AGPA Annual Meeting, Mr. Barry spoke with Robert Schulte, MSW. He offers some candid advice for consumers of national political news.

Schulte: What is the essence of political power?
Barry: Simply, to influence. Winning and governing depend on a bond between the politician and the people. What we’re talking about is trust. That’s an emotional transaction. The most important role of political leadership is to fill two basic emotional needs that are very much in conflict. One is the “dream of soaring, of glory . . . achievement . . . ambition.” A leader who inspires us speaks to this need. The other need is to “be safe and feel secure.” To the extent that a politician fulfills these two competing basic needs, an emotional bond with the people is established.

Schulte: What is the role of the press?
Barry: The press is always this great thing out there in politics. Two centuries ago Edmund Burke observed, “There are three estates in parliament, but in the reporters’ gallery yonder, there sits a fourth estate more important by far than them all.”

Schulte: You describe the press as having “crowd-like power.” It sounds dangerous.
Barry: It can be. The relationship between the press and those in power is a complex one—simultaneously symbiotic, parasitic, and adversarial, with subject and object constantly reversing roles. The press affects issues and the people it covers, and yet it can be manipulated in its selection of stories and the way it covers them. Former White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes expressed the enduring tension between the manipulators and manipulated when he told reporters, “Don’t tell me how to manage the news and I won’t tell you how to report it.”

How the media reports stories is also a function of other factors: of the interplay between reporters’ and editors’ sense of responsibility and fairness, their egos, and their publication’s (or broadcast’s) competitiveness. But competitiveness can generate sameness, rather than independent thought. That’s a real problem.

Schulte: You also implicate corporate-based profit motive. The David Letterman versus Nightline dilemma comes to mind.
Barry: The old style publisher wanted to promote his own world-view more than make money. In my opinion, the modern day corporate profit motive is more insidious. Mergers like AOL and Time/Warner create pressures to cut costs and emphasize profits. And there are fewer and fewer separate outlets for news.

Schulte: Should we be satisfied with the current state of affairs?
Barry: In my book I write, “The press disappoints so much because in a free society it matters so much. It is not the role of the press to right wrongs, or even necessarily to uncover truths. That is too much to expect, given the competitive pressures driving the media—the need to be first, a fear of sticking out when wrong and of falling behind when everyone else is moving in another direction—which makes it superficial and headline-oriented. One cannot even expect it to resist particularly well being manipulated, since it often serves the media’s own interest to yield to manipulation.” 

Schulte: What’s the best we can expect from the national media?
Barry: One can expect the press to correct lies and to report truths uncovered by society’s critics. One can also demand less smugness, self-congratulation and more self-criticism. That much is possible because it only requires a change of fashion. It doesn’t change the institution.

Schulte: Ultimately, how can we evaluate the credibility of the news reported to us?
Barry: Do what you as therapists do best! Read and listen carefully. Think for yourself. We all tend to hear what we want. Be skeptical enough to read through the “spin.” Listen carefully in an effort to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Remember what the pressures are that helps create the news we consume. Above all, listen. 

This article was published in the August/September 2002 issue of The Group Circle.