Spin Sanity

A former NPR reporter wants some truth:

“I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.”

As a result, Seabrook is trying to do something about it. Her new project is DecodeDC, a website that will feature Seabrook’s blog posts and podcasts that aim to “decipher Washington’s Byzantine language and procedure, sweeping away what doesn’t matter so listeners can focus on what does.”

“We need to stop coddling lawmakers, stop buying their red team, blue team narrative and ask harder questions of them,” Seabrook says in an introductory audio clip.

It would be nice if her colleagues who are still on the job would do this-beginning with the President himself, perhaps?