Bush Melts Down Over Iran Nukes
December 5th, 2007Lessons For The U.S. News Media
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Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
Remember this line from that old candy commercial, “Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t?”
That’s ringing in my head this morning as I write this:
Sometimes you feel like fighting; sometimes you don’t.
Sometimes, it’s more fun to sit back and watch others fight about it.
Sometimes it’s enough to sit around in the Strat-o-lounger and watch people make idiots of themselves on C-SPAN.
I tend to do that a lot lately, although I could get out of my easy chair more - if the public interest seemed heightened enough to know there were those who would support such an effort.
Meanwhile, this blogging business sometimes provides the perfect forum to be an armchair quarterback, a back seat driver if you will.
Here’s an example.
I was watching C-SPAN the other day and saw an interesting forum at the National Press Club in Washingtion moderated by Marvin Kalb. His guests included Dan Rather and his heir apparent tough questioner at the White House, NBC’s David Gregory. Helen Thomas was also on the panel, along with the New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger.
Reporters working for Alabama newspapers could learn a thing or two by watching these kinds of programs, or reading about them on blogs, but I suppose they don’t care enough or have time for such trivial things like self-criticism and trying to figure out what they are doing wrong.
The blurb from the panel discussion that got the most attention in blogland was a comment from Gregory. He argued that, because there’s so much polarization in politics today, people try to divine or assign motives for reporters asking certain questions at the White House press briefings. When Helen Thomas asked Gregory what was responsible for the polarization, he said:
“I think its because of the internet largely. The polarized atmosphere in the internet and blogs and whatnot have been a major contributor to that.”
That’s a meme, of course, designed to say “look at us. We are the Washington news media. Look no further to find out what’s going on in the world. We will tell you what you need to know. Those newfangled blogs are not worth spitting on.”
But let the analysis continue…
In February - at a similar event at the Press Club - Gregory pointed the finger at blogs for the reason that politics and political coverage has become so polarized.
But Glenn Greenwald pointed out at the time:
“The reality, of course, is that most media-criticizing bloggers do not want journalists to be ‘political advocates.’ They want them to do what journalists are supposed to do - which is not sit around with their good, trustworthy, nice-guy friends in the White House and simply ask questions and get information, but instead to scrutinize that information, treat it with doubt, investigate it before passing it along to determine whether it’s true (or not).
“And the reason bloggers want them to do that, the reason that bloggers demand more of journalists is not because bloggers are enraged, confused, unreasonable partisans. It’s because bloggers are American citizens who are deeply concerned about what has happened to their country over the last six years.”
Gregory Says Blogs To Blame for Polarization?
They, we, are also concerned that the traditional, legacy press and broadcast news outlets are seriously letting us down.
So even those of us who have spent a considerable amount of time working for news organizations now realize that it is going to take a Web Press revolution to turn things around.
Here’s one column about the Gregory incident that got a lot of attention in blogland. It makes some good points.
David Gregory Meet I.F. Stone and Tom Paine
What no one has seemed to focus on from that panel discussion was Dan Rather’s comments about a big part of the problem being the corporate takeover of the news media in recent decades, which has almost completely torn down the wall separating news rooms and boardrooms.
Of course Gregory defended his corporate bosses at GE-NBC and gave the obligatory Washington reporters answer when that subject comes up. He said he has never been interferred with by the suits at NBC.
But I suspect if you could get Gregory over to the Irish Times bar near the Capitol in D.C. and get him talking off the record after a few beers, he might just talk about the self censorship that goes on all the time. It’s not that the president of GE, which bought out NBC in 1986, has ever called him up and threatened his job if he didn’t report things a certain way.
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| White House |
| President George W. Bush spins… |
In other words (to use a Bushism), reporters know which side their bread is buttered on. To use another food cliche to explain this, reporters know you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
One of the most useful things to come out of the panel session was a discussion of how the White House press corps should gang up and agree to followup on each others’ questions, since Bush is adept at changing the subject by controlling who he calls on.
So that’s what happened yesterday morning in Bush’s press conference in which the Iran nuke question came up due to the new Intel report saying Iran is not such an eminent threat after all.
Bush nearly lost it completely. His body language revealed what a lot of us have been saying for a long time: Bush is a liar of the first order.
And here’s another lesson.
When the Los Angeles Times decided to purge liberal columnist Robert Scheer from its editorial pages a couple of years ago, he didn’t die or go away. He started an online news site at TruthDig.Com.
His column now appears regularly in The Nation magazine, and he does something this week that a lot of people have been calling on the U.S. news media to do for several years: Tell the truth. Call it like it is. Go ahead and say it.
“Bush is such a liar,” Scheer says in the lede to this week’s column.
Our new favorite blog columnist in Alabama, Scott Horton at Harpers.Org, also called Bush a liar in his post on the subject. He evens explains Bush’s three kinds of lies.
Department of Poorly Coordinated and Unbelievable Cover Stories
Compare that to the so-called fair and balanced Reuters wire story out today. It’s critical, but gives Bush his out.
True to Form, Bush Refuses to Budge on Iran
Now I’ve called Bush a liar so many times on this Web Press that I can’t count the times in the archives over the past two and a half years. Maybe as time goes by and it becomes even more apparent, more bloggers will do it.
Then, perhaps one day before this disastrous period in our history comes to an ignominious end, someone in a big newspaper like the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times or the Washington Post might finally get around to telling its readers the truth about the current occupant of the White House, like Walter Cronkite did on CBS in the late 1960s after his now famous trip to Vietnam.
We don’t expect the Birmingham News to get it, but perhaps if someone over at the Associated Press would do it, the local TV news talking heads might also tell their viewers the truth for a change.
And maybe one of these days, someone in big medialand will get around to catching up with another position blogs like this have been taking for some time.
Maybe David Gregory will go on NBC nightly news one day soon and say what we have known for several years. The only hope we have of restoring America’s reputation in the world is either for Bush and Cheney to resign - or for Congress to impeach them and remove them from office.
We are not kidding. We are not making this stuff up. It’s not an angry rant. It’s not a conspiracy theory.
Maybe if you don’t believe me, you should watch this video. I posted it the other day, but perhaps you missed it. If so, click on it today.
Then, if you are still not convinced, go buy this book or check it out from the library and read it.
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
If enough people pay attention to this, maybe we can save the world from Giuliani … and Huckabee.
