McCarthy, however, is an extreme example. Such diatribes must be factored out if one wishes to reach useful conclusions about why workaday journalism in the Gulf War deteriorated so often into Nitwitness News. Some of it was the sheer incompetence and ignorance of amateur war correspondents. At times the comments from the amateurs were so dumb that they were funny, but the more important explanations of the Nitwitness News phenomenon lie in the prevailing psychology of the news media. Reporters may be motivated by idealism, dreams of a Pulitzer Prize, or a few extra minutes of airtime, but they cultivate an active disregard for circulation, advertising, and other economic considerations.
Reporters like to envision themselves as champions of the public.
According to the polls, the public figured the media had all the information they needed to report the war. Given their chance to ask questions, reporters went mostly after speculation, irrelevancies, and excruciating detail. In one instance, they clamored for a description of the markings by which pilots recognized traffic on the ground as allied rather than enemy vehicles. Whatever the forensic merits of that theory, pool reports and other sources were obviously providing the basic facts and a great many details about the war to anyone who wanted them. In that, Mr. Lamb came close to spilling the beans.