Our Breaking News

When I got started in journalism, the honorable profession generated little controversy, concentrating as it did on reporting about events that had happened the day before. Scoops, to be sure, were valued then as now. Commentary had its place in newspapers, too, but columnists weren't particularly partisan, and men like Walter Lippman and James Reston adopted an Olympian tone of knowledgeability and authority.

It's a different world today. Scoop journalism took on a whole new cast with the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The press lost more of its inhibitions about challenging authority. Journalists yearning to stand out by breaking news sometimes ran out of control, and young reporters like Janet Cooke of The Washington Post and later Jayson Blair of the New York Times embarrassed their institutions. Even the most seasoned professionals love a scoop, as CBS anchor Dan Rather demonstrated in September with his (increasingly dubious) challenge to President Bush's military record. Rather's medium has offered a compelling, here-and-now immediacy to news reporting, but also has proved a comfortable home for shows that tarnish journalism by blurring the lines between reporting, opinion and entertainment.

A lot of the Sturm und Drang about journalism has stemmed from its treatment of government and politics-still the topic that attracts most people to the profession. Stories focusing on government scandals, many blown out of reasonable proportion, and shrill commentary attacking the perfidies of political actors, may have built the reputations of commentators, but they haven't done much for the reputation of journalism, nor of government.

As an independent news organization, Government Executive also enjoys breaking news about questionable practices-as we have about misuse of technology contracts to build buildings and hire prison interrogators in Iraq. Such scoops satisfy our competitive spirit, but the day-to-day appeal of our work lies in telling the stories of the biggest institutions in the world as they struggle with the most complex matters of national security and social welfare.

In this issue, Denise Kersten writes about the $850 million effort to automate the $100 billion Social Security disability program. This is surely one of the most challenging technology management assignments in government and one that has to guide about 2.5 million claims a year to just resolution. Katherine McIntire Peters explores the huge challenges posed to the U.S. military from the presence in Iraq of a mind-bending 250,000 private security personnel. And Shawn Zeller profiles the keeper of civil liberties in an agency-the Homeland Security Department-that's prone to overlooking same.

While the big agencies and programs of government are interesting as bureaucratic institutions, it's often hard to put a human face on the stories they produce. But in this issue, you can read about the achievements of Ambassador Prudence Bushnell, the FBI's Robert Clifford, and six other federal officials whose work has earned them special recognition as this year's winners in the Service to America Medals program. Their stories underline the interest inherent in many government jobs and our continuing curiosity about how they are performed.