BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. A new administration presents a new roster of potential sources for White House reporters, so it’s no surprise that 100 days in, reporters are still working to cultivate the new crew. One time-honored tactic is the story known as the “beat sweetener.” It’s essentially a puff piece written in an effort to win favor and secure access to a source. Blogger Glenn Greenwald made waves in March when he accused The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza of writing a, quote, “love letter” to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Politico’s Michael Calderone ponders the latest crop of purported beat sweeteners and their place in the Washington ecosystem. Michael, welcome to the show.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: Great to be here.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, first, describe what a beat sweetener is.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: What’s telling about a lot of beat sweeteners is oftentimes they rely on quotes from colleagues and basically gratuitously flattering speech. They talk about how hardworking the person is. They are in the office 14 hours a day. They're always within the earshot of the president.
BOB GARFIELD: And they never say, and, by the way, he’s widely reputed to be a high-strung jerk.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: No, you never hear that. And also with the beat sweetener, it is early in the administration. You have a lot of new people coming in, a lot of new blood. And especially those underneath their superiors might want to curry favor with their own superiors in a beat sweetener by saying how hardworking their boss is and how much he gets done in the White House and how – [BOB LAUGHS] – things would just not function if he wasn't there.
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] So it’s actually a food chain of sweetening that goes on. Can you give some examples from the last few months? Did you, for example, think that Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece on Emanuel was a beat sweetener?
MICHAEL CALDERONE: I think Lizza’s piece qualifies. It was full of this sort of flattering language. There was a line about him being the John McEnroe of the White House. And while it did touch upon some of his negative qualities, that he’s profane or that he’s difficult to deal with at times, overwhelmingly it showed, you know, a political figure who is kind of essential to the workings of the White House. One of the White House figures that’s been profiled to death has been Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary. And this beat sweetener could be seen as a way for reporters who are in the briefing room with Gibbs day after day to want to curry favor with him.
BOB GARFIELD: So Glenn Greenwald’s suspicion fell on Ryan Lizza partly because he has a fat book deal to cover the Obama presidency, which I guess reminded him, and many people, of Bob Woodward’s ultimate beat sweetener [LAUGHS], his first book on the George W. Bush administration, which was widely perceived as too soft on the president, but only to be followed by two other books that were much harsher. Is that why Lizza is in the spotlight here?
MICHAEL CALDERONE: I think that has a lot to do with it. Lizza’s piece was kind of aptly titled The Gatekeeper. And Rahm Emanuel, being chief of staff, is somebody that could really inhibit your access to the White House if he wanted to. So the fact that Ryan Lizza, in addition to reporting for The New Yorker, has a six-figure book contract, it calls into question whether Lizza is considering while writing a piece for The New Yorker that he still needs access to be able to complete his book. Without access to the White House, that six-figure book deal could just fall apart.
BOB GARFIELD: So now what follows is a defense of beat sweeteners. I don't think there’s anything wrong with them in general. We're talking about new players in Washington. This gives the readers an opportunity to meet and learn about these people and at a stage of the administration that there’s nothing really to be adversarial about. They're just profiles, so, you know, why must they be aggressive?
MICHAEL CALDERONE: Defenders of the beat sweetener will say that the reader is getting something out of it. The reader is getting to better understand that there are unsung players in the White House who perform a variety of tasks and are not going to be the people on TV. Early on in an administration, first 100 days, it’s hard to find as much to be critical about some of these people. As time goes by, I think it’s inevitable that the Washington press corps will find as many possible flaws as they can.
BOB GARFIELD: At which point, if a beat sweetener has opened channels of access, it turns out to help the reporter, and therefore the reader, get inside when the conversation isn't so polite.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: Sure, the reporter can get sources in the White House. Later on, when there might be some sort of shakeup, the reporter might be able to rely on some of those sources to actually get the real story [LAUGHS] that’s going on behind the scenes for the readers.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay, what’s the conclusion? What’s the moral? What have we learned?
MICHAEL CALDERONE: [LAUGHS] I can't condemn the flattering profile as the worst sin committed in journalism. I think it’s sort of one of the customs in the Washington press corps and it’s something to always be mindful of when you’re reading some of these profiles – you know, what may be the agenda of all the parties involved.
BOB GARFIELD: Let the buyer beware.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: Michael, thank you so much.
MICHAEL CALDERONE: [LAUGHING] All right, thanks so much.
BOB GARFIELD: Michael Calderone write for Politico.com. Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker writer whose Rahm Emanuel profile we discussed, wrote another profile this week of Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget. In it, Lizza details squabbles between Orszag and another White House economist, Larry Summers. In one passage, Lizza relates a story attributed to a “senior White House official” of how the two men’s staffs fought over who would sit in the seat opposite Obama during budget meetings. Hmm, maybe beat sweetening has its rewards after all.
