Credibility battle: Press vs. Bush Admin.

And to lump in The Economist of all pubs... :'(

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on the drumbeat for war against Iran ...

QUESTION: I mean, Sean, sort of a follow-up on all these questions. In a general sense, the big (inaudible) at the moment we've seen, you know, cover of Newsweek, cover of Economist saying Iran could be next, a lot of speculation about military action. Can you give me any reaction to that?

MR. MCCORMACK: It seems to be the news media that is whipping up that storyline, not us.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/012436.php

 

I knew I shouldn't have sent those two battle groups into the Gulf, or arranged for that top-secret background briefing on arms smuggling.

 

Because all you have to do is yell "unpatriotic" or "liberal" at the NYT and it likely will fold. (As important as the NSA wiretapping story was, they held it for a year.) They never EVER learn. Also, if you go back to the rules on unnamed sources that they publicized in the wake of Jayson Blair's shenanigans, you'll find that the story about the briefing violated almost every damn one of them.

 

But I ask you, can an administration line that "the news media that is whipping up that storyline" hold with the American people? Woe be unto us if so.

 

They should hire you to run the ship.

Of course, would the Proletariat release you from your brainwashed slave contract?

 

Bill Keller's sleepiness at the wheel can easily be traced to his long-time buddy-buddy relationship
with Paulie Wolfowitz.

Keller FINALLY emerged from his sustained stupor when so many others did -- during the public origination of the Libby business, followed by Katrina.

 

If you're going to post, you really should have what you write fall under one or more of these categories: relevant, funny or humorous, intelligent. Nonsensical ramblings belong on the Random Thoughts thread, and since it's been nuked, I guess there's no real place for it here.

 

All presidential administrations battle the press. That's something that anyone with any sense of history understands.That's good presidents and bad, and it doesn't require having an opinion of the current administration to acknowledge.

The money question is how the press acquits itself in the face of that pre-existing condition.

And the current performance of the press is a low-water mark in my lifetime. Lincoln, and probably FDR, too, would have rounded up the top editors of the big blue-state opinion shapers and thrown the into the stockade for providing aid and comfort to the enemy. Maybe shot a couple, just to make sure the others got the message. I'm glad that we don't live in a society where that would be condoned, but with that comes some responsibility on the part of the press to police itself.

And on that score, I have no doubt where the Miserable Failure really is.

Given the unrelenting drumbeat of negativity for the last six years, excepting a brief period of time after 9/11, it's a marvel that the president got re-elected in 2004 and that his popularity, such as it is, and our standing in the world community isn't worse.

And I say this with no doubt in my mind: If the press had covered World War II the way it has covered events since 9/11, we would have lost. And that is shameful.

 

Yes, the enormous skepticism with which the press treated George W. Bush from 9/11/01 until about the beginning of 2005 was a tremendous drawback, as were the many dozen stories written about the ginned-up phony casus belli, and the enormously skeptical dispatches from all those embedded reporters rolling into Baghdad. It certainly was a hard first three years for Fredo.
By the way, the Chicago Tribune printed the story that we'd broken the Japanese Naval code and FDR didn't even prosecute them, let alone shoot anybody, and Ernie Pyle's unembedded WWII dispatches were more honest than anything we got out of the current combat reporting, and we won that one anyway, so find some better history next time.