May 04, 2006

Lapdogs: The White House Press Corpse When the Freedom of the Press is willfully abandoned, representative democracy is fubar'd. As Colbert hands them their ass on a plate, the gross negligence of the White House reporters begins to loom ever larger.

"At one point while making his way through the press questioners, Bush awkwardly referred to a list of reporters whom he was instructed to call on. 'This is scripted,' he joked. The press laughed. But Bush meant it was scripted, literally. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later admitted he compiled Bush's cheat sheet, which made sure he did not call on reporters from some prominent outlets like Time, Newsweek, USA Today, or the Washington Post. Yet even after Bush announced the event was 'scripted,' reporters, either embarrassed for Bush or embarrassed for themselves, continued to play the part of eager participants at a spontaneous news conference, shooting their hands up in the air in hopes of getting Bush's attention. For TV viewers it certainly looked like an actual press event. "

posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • "Then again it should not have been surprising that most guests invited by MSM producers to discuss the war on television were in favor of it, since so many of the experts were on the government payroll themselves. According to figures from media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department. Only 34 stories, or just 8 percent, were of independent origin." Wow, 92% of broacast TV news before the war was from the administration.
  • Xeni at BoingBoing is on the case, too.
  • I honestly have no idea what to make of the Whitehouse press corps. They certainly haven't seemed to have done much in holding this administration accountable, yet considering the Press Secretaries and spin management tactics they've been dealing with one wonders what they might have managed to accomplish at all. Plus the argument that maintaining access is 'part of their job' does have some validity to it, although it does not cover all sins as some reporters seem to think it does. Furthermore, reporting by MSM reporters not part of the WH corps often seems unbalanced in favor of the administration and GOP (the so-called non-unbalanced 'balanced' article), so are the WH reporters any worse? Or not?
  • I'd have posted this myself if the filter was up.
  • are the WH reporters any worse? I would argue yes since theoretically they have the position to question the administration - or the POTUS - directly. It's incumbent on them to bust the administration's chops when they spew lies whether it's "Saddam has WMDs" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". Only one of those was a little more important than the other. And they were all over the wrong one. I would further argue that in comparison to a WHPC from even 30 years ago this crop are babied, pampered ineffectual self-important divas who would rather be coiffed than briefed. AND that this poor situation ties directly into the almost inconceivable importance that television holds in our culture, but there's another thread for that kind of talk.
  • I don't think it's so much complicit as it is lazy. Just easier for the press to reprocess government pronouncements than do their own digging and write their own stories. But although you righteously curse the DC Press, they couldn't do it without the tacit approval of their editors and publishers. Blame should go where it belongs: to the news managers, who *could* require (and support) their reporters to go after government the way the press is supposed to - fairly, continuously and vigorously - but don't, either out of fear or out of greed.
  • Absolutely correct. Corporate culture inside any massive news organization (I've had second-hand exposure to Gannett through my wife) can at times seem like a gigantic fucking joke. But this'll continue as long as newspapers and news broadcasts continue to worry about profitability.
  • I don't think it's so much complicit as it is lazy. Fair enough, but in this particular context isn't being lazy about it also being complicit? If the WHPC didn't even exist - if Scott McClellan just wrote the headlines directly - wouldn't it be the same thing? this'll continue as long as newspapers and news broadcasts continue to worry about profitability. Also a fine point, and one that suggests we might do well to re-think the role of capitalism in mass media, doesn't it? (You BBC people hush.)
  • we might do well to re-think the role of capitalism in mass media Not necessarily. News outlets have always been ostensibly business oriented (you see this most prevalently in the small press, which often have side businesses like spot printing, graphic design work - hell, when I was a reporter, I used to take crime scene pictures for the police department, since they didn't have a photographer on staff). But historically, the parent companies that owned news outlets were comfortable with the idea of losing money on them - that providing the news was a responsibility, an obligation, and that profitability was secondary (indeed, illusory even) to providing the service to the public. There was a day when the press regarded its access and power as a privilege, and felt obligated to the public that provided them that privilege. Alas, no more.
  • *pours out a forty in memoriam*
  • you see this most prevalently in the small press Point of order: with the media consolidation ushered in by the FCC changes that were begun under Reagan, there is no small press for most of America. nifty chart here and who owns what here
  • McClellan's final press conference to press: "Keep up the good work" Heh. No shit.
  • Another example: when Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who used to deliver the PDBs to George Bush 1.0, confronted Rumsfeld about Rumsfeld's lie that "we know where the weapons are," most media reports ignored the fact that McGovern was accurately quoting Rumsfeld.
  • there is no small press for most of America. There are alternative weeklies. Some of them are actually good newspapers. But you have to live in or near a big city to get them, of course.
  • FUBAR.
  • To be honest, I think lots of "alternative" weeklies are increasingly being owned by large publishers. There's not necessarily anything wrong with this, but we should be aware that papers aren't always as independent as we want them to be. For example, both the Dallas Observer and the Houston Press (the two Texas alternative weeklies I used to read) are owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns a bunch of other papers all over the country (including, obviously, the Village Voice). This seems like a good, lefty company, but it also means that a lot of the content of these weeklies is very standardized.
  • Are any alternative weeklies in the White House Press Corps?
  • Jeff Gannon?
  • Prolly not. Here's the thing, though - it doesn't matter who sits in the little chairs, that's all horseshit. All the papers, big and little, should have their reporters out in the world getting stories from their sources. Sitting in a press conference is crap! What, they expect Tony Snow to say something meaningful, or answer a question directly? You young folks out there may not remember a time before Bush (which would explain the apparently generally held feeling that he is somehow the worst president eva! c'mon - Wilson!), but we fogie types have seen presidents come and go, and by and large they are all completely and utterly full of crap. Any buttmunch can sit in the briefing room and write shit down, hell *I* could do that - but a reporter worthy of the name would rather be out on the street, running down a story.
  • Government and the press are *supposed* to have an adversarial relationship, after all. The Bush administration is holding up it's end - the press is apparently off somewhere eyeballing it's 401(k) statement.
  • That sound you're hearing is my wife applauding.
  • I see the corrupt press as not the root problem, but rather as the reflection of a population that's apathetic and distracted (i.e. the consumer lifestyle). The days of Woodward & Bernstein reporting seem to have faded, too -- it's become clear that corporate entities have cast aside moral obligations. We don't want to hurt the bottom line, you know, unless we can explit a short-term PR payoff.
  • Guh. Thanks petebest, I would've missed this Salon article if I hadn't seen it here. (I'm more a Tom the Dancing Bug guy.) rolypolyman, I don't think that it's really that the populace is distracted, but rather that they view the whole goddamn republican enterprise as a elitist game that they have no power over. Noam Chomsky wrote a bit about this, and though I don't agree with everything the guy says, his musings on this topic seemed to me to be pretty spot on. I'll dig up a link or reference to the Chomsky article once I sober the fuck up.
  • Yeah, I'm with Fes. Screw access. I mean if they don't want to talk to you than you roll on and go with the info you have and say "refused to comment" or "didn't return phone calls" sorta thing. Probably work well considering all the "unnamed officials" the press seems to be using lately.
  • rpm - yes to some degree it is the apathy of the populace wherever you may be - but I think it may also be in the education of journos now, and closer association of the 4th estate with multinational corporations as opposed to independent companies. I don't know if it is the same in other countries but it is quite easy to tell in Oz when a particular media company has decided it is time for a change of government, be it state or federal.(Yep I mean a corruption of the press) Reporting has also moved considerably from the objective to the subjective with the evolution of journalists as opinion makers/celebrities as opposed to reporters. Roll on the gravy train. Why report it when you can make millions more as a talking head in your own right aaaagh, cynicism overflow
  • Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" spells it all out in crystal-clear description and video clips. It's nothing we didn't know, it's everything we already knew. In disgustingly obvious detail. April Ryan, Mark Knoller - whined about it. SO fired.
  • Chris Matthews - fired. MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight? What's the importance of you shutting the fsck up, Chris Matthews? Wolf Blitzer (ibid.) - fired. On the May 1, 2003, edition of CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, Blitzer noted that jets like the F/A-18 Hornet "helped win the war in Iraq" and twice commented on Bush's TANG background -- at one point calling Bush a "one-time Fighter Dog." Poor bastard was so shocked when Ol' Clicky Dick Cheney ate his ballsack on live TV. Good riddance. Brian Williams (ibid.) - fired. On the May 1 edition of CNBC's The News with Brian Williams, Williams, now anchor of NBC's Nightly News, said of Bush: WILLIAMS: And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today. Sorry - off the bus, Brian. Washington Post staff writer Karen DeYoung (ibid.) - bye. Bush ignored it all, swaggering forward and pumping hands with everybody in sight before they could salute. "Here's a man with a birthday," he yelled at a television cameraman as he swung his arm around a sailor. "Put him on C-SPAN." For once, there were no security concerns to keep Bush from pressing flesh, and he made the most of it, hugging and patting everyone on the back -- from the greasy flight deck crew to F-18 pilots waiting to fly home this afternoon. Mop up the drool before you leave, Karen. Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation and Time columnist Joe Klein (ibid.) - fired. SCHIEFFER: As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you're a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush. KLEIN: Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. You pattycake makers must be proud of your pies. Get out.
  • New York Times roundup of the "Mission Accomplished" daze Elisabeth Bumiller (ibid.) President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment. ''This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out,'' a senior administration official said…. Judith Miller (ibid.) However, it appears that officials in Washington have not resolved what position, if any, Mr. Chalabi should occupy. Mr. Chalabi has strong support from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. However, the State Department and other American officials have reservations.
  • The one major news outlet (Knight-Ridder, now McClatchy) to actually think critically about incredible pre-war Iraq bullshit, told to stay off Department of Defense's plane Bureau Chief John Walcott and current and former McClatchy Pentagon correspondents say they have not been allowed on the Defense Secretary's plane for at least three years, claiming the news company is being retaliated against for its reporting. . . . Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman called such assertions "absurd," adding, "There is no basis of fact for that allegation. It is not true. There are always more people who would like to travel with the secretary than seats available."