This was just Bush's eighth press conference since taking office, and each one of them has been a travesty. In his first presser, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month after his controversial inauguration, he was not asked a single question about the election, Al Gore or the Supreme Court. On the other hand, he was asked five questions about Bill Clinton's pardons.
Reporters argue that they have no choice. They'll say they can't protest or boycott the staged format, because they risk being stripped of their seat in the press pool. For the same reason, they can't write anything too negative. They can't write, for instance, "President Bush, looking like a demented retard on the eve of war..." That leaves them with the sole option of "working within the system" and, as they like to say, "trying to take our shots when we can."
But the White House press corps' idea of "taking a shot" is David Sanger asking Bush what he thinks of British foreign minister Jack Straw saying that regime change was not necessarily a war goal. And then meekly sitting his ass back down when Bush ignores the question.
They can't write what they think, and can't ask real questions. What the hell are they doing there? If the answer is "their jobs," it's about time we started wondering what that means.
Now, putting aside the fact that Taibbi often reads as if he slept with the Complete Works of Hunter S. Thompson under his pillow while he was in journalism school, his attack is absolutely justified and on the money. As are Greenwald's and The Howler's. On the big questions of the day -- the war, the economy, FISA, Guantanamo Bay -- the press has basically given Bush a pass. As for their relationship with McCain; I'd say the Arizona maverick slapped the last remaining fatty links of journalistic integrity down next to those slabs of baby backs on the grill at his Sedona ranch and burned them to a crisp. Here's a bit of Washington Editor of Time.com, Ana Marie Cox's defense of the grilling, or lack thereof, at the McCain ranch:
"...Maybe we missed the ones you want asked; questions on behalf of the public (although I -- we all, I think -- would appreciate if you agitate while also showing some humor and basic manners). You might also start a blog and then try to get the campaign to let you on the bus. They've done it before. (Though I'm sure it's harder now than it was last fall.)
On the larger issue of the relationship of McCain and the press. Well, it's a worthy topic and more complicated than I thought it would be when I started covering him. You could, as they say, write a book on it."
Really puts your questions about an independent press to bed, doesn't it? Clarence Darrow she ain't.
Jacques Steinberg wrote a piece in the New York Times today about the Boys on the Bus. In it, he says,
"In the past, one advantage for those reporters who committed to spend as many as two years on the campaign trail was that they were often vaulted into the White House press room; many of those assigned to cover the next president will not have had the benefit of such seasoning..."
I've never understood why a serious reporter would want to work in the White House press room. I mean, if your ambition is to root out corruption and follow a story wherever it leads, damn the consequences, and all that. You sit there, waving your hand in the air, hoping for Scott McClellan or Tony Snow to call on you, at which point he'll wait until your lips stop moving and then repeat the talking points he led off with and move on to Helen Thomas. Seems like third grade all over again, except most of the students are smarter than the teacher. I can't imagine it being very satisfying.
And if campaign reporting is basically training for the White House, just how stimulating can it be? You listen to the same stump speech ad infinitum and wait for the candidate to wander down the aisle to the back of the plane somewhere over Idaho and repeat the same talking points that they went over at the last speech and are tweaking to cover on the next one. Then maybe have a donut. Not exactly to be confused with meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage.
I don't want to knock it too hard. It's a job. A well-paid one with opportunity for advancement. Advancement to where? TV, of course. Become a big shot, White House correspondent talking head, like David Gregory or John Roberts. At that point, you never know. You get up one morning, Tucker Carlson's been canned, and you've got your own show by lunchtime.
But it's not really news reporting, is it? I've always appreciated the BBC term for an anchorman. It's newsreader or, sometimes, news presenter. Which is really closer to what Katie Couric is doing than anchoring, when you get right down to it. Because if that's what she is over at the CBS Evening News, the anchor, they're going to need a smaller boat.
It's easy to take potshots at the MSM. And it's part of the job description of the blogger. The more chum the big boys ladle out, the more frenzied our efforts to reach that hand and bite it off. It's good for the MSM, too. The blogosphere serves as a kind of omnipresent ombudsman reminding them to watch their ass. As Jack Shafer wrote on Slate:
"What can bloggers do that professional journalists can't? Because bloggers answer to no one, they need not worry if the dispatches cause the chairman of the board of General Motors to stop talking to the publisher -- or placing ads. Their independence gives them a subversive strength, one that undermines the cozy relationship the press has with its corporate cousins and government. The unmediated nature of blogs, which frightens so many professional journalists, is really a plus. With so many bloggers writing outside the bounds of authority, they've become impossible to silence or censor, and their provocations help keep the national debate going at full tilt."
All true. The danger for bloggers, ironically, is that they can become so righteous, so convinced of the validity of their voice and the voices of their like-minded commenters in the personal kingdom they've created, that they forget the value of the dissenting voice. They can become exactly who they are criticizing. Take William Kristol. Please. No, but seriously, a few months ago, the New York Times added Kristol as a columnist to their Op-Ed page. Seemed, to my mind, an awkward fit, which made it, also to my mind, an interesting concept. What better way to consider the opposing view? They could sit him over there in the corner next to David Brooks, give him someone to eat lunch with.
But some have not been particularly welcoming. Brad DeLong responded to Kristol's yawn over Barack Obama's race speech by saying:
"When Kristol's column hit the New York Times building Sunday night, it should have rung some alarm bells. David Shipley should have gone to Carla Anne Robins who should have gone to Andrew Rosenthal. They should have said:
'Hey! Wait a minute! Kristol was enthusiastic about race-talk a week ago, when he thought it was a way he could knife Obama. If we publish this, we'll be even more of a laughingstock than we already are -- Kristol is pumping our credibility as an organization dry. We need to call him and tell him to reconsider: tell him that he can't use our space to make fools of us as well as of himself, and that our readers have a memory at least a week long and will remember what he wrote last time.'
They should have gone to Bill Keller, and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Jill Abramson and John Geddes and Jonathan Landsman and Dean Baquet and Richard Berke and Tom Bodkin and Susan Edgerley and Glenn Kramon and Gerald Marzorati and Michele McNally and William Schmidt and Craig Whitney -- at least one of them should have weighed in, reminding Rosenthal and Sulzberger that when the editorial page dynamites its own credibility it dynamites the credibility of the news pages as well. None of them did. Invertebrate cowards, all."
Well. Other than the best argument for an editor I've read in . . . well, ever . . . this is ridiculous. (Jesus Christ, was he going to go through the entire masthead? I kept expecting him to stop, his point made, but the names kept coming and coming. It was like waiting for a long, slow, freight train to pass by at a railroad crossing when you're late for work). No respectable paper's news pages are reflective of or influenced by its editorial department. Nor should any respectable reader confuse the two. It was a sound decision by the Times to add a conservative voice to the page, even if they did choose a hack like Kristol. DeLong and other liberal bloggers should be the first to recognize the significance of expanding the political spectrum at any MSM outlet. It's why we do what we do -- to fill the void created by the corporate media's refusal to entertain real dissent.
Reading a conservative voice at the Times is always a good thing. It's no different than Charlie Rose interviewing Iraqis about the war and their feelings towards the U.S. occupation of their country. Or Obama giving white America an insight into what is being said by blacks when we're not in the room.
Dissent is healthy. It's the path to an educated public. And a free one.
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