Battle Over McClellan's Criticism of Media on War Rages

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: Battle Over McClellan's Criticism of Media on War Rages
By Greg Mitchell
Published: May 30, 2008

NEW YORK In the wake of the Scott McClellan revelations this week, reporters and TV anchors (past and present) have split on how much to take to heart his criticism of the media for getting "hoodwinked" by President Bush on the run-up to the Iraq war. Katie Couric admitted some failings while Tom Brokaw admitted none. The debate got even hotter on Friday.

In reviewing the McClellan book, "What Happened," for the Los Angeles Times today, longtime media critic Tim Rutten clearly believes that McClellan goes too far. Rutten writes: "He should be granted part of the point on the press -- though only part. The news media, no less than the nation, endured a wrenching trauma on 9/11 and no less than any other institution in society felt the moral obligation to demonstrate solidarity with a country under deadly threat." Then he declares, "In that situation, not giving the administration the benefit of the doubt, when it presented 'facts' it said were based on the best and most sensitive intelligence available from the CIA and other spy agencies, would have been mindlessly adversarial. Moreover, since the media lacked the ability to do original reporting on the ground in Iraq, what basis would there have been for contradicting the administration's assessment of Saddam Hussein's aims?"

Meanwhile, on MSNBC, David Gregory said, "The right questions were asked. I think there‘s a lot of critics -— and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one -— who thinks that, if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, this is bogus, and you‘re a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn‘t do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It‘s not our role." Also on MSNBC, Mike Allen of Politico.com (who was White House reporter for the Washington Post when the war started) called the McClellan charges "ludicrous" on MSNBC. And in an interview on the radio talk show hosted by Mike Gallagher, he offered: "Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the leftwing haters. Can you believe it, in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?"

But Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, who did ask the tough questions at Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) before the war, responded heatedly to arguments similar to the above in a McClatchy posting, as follows in this excerpt....

"The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war."

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003810355

[Merlot]

1. there they go again...linking Sadam to 9/11

Rutten writes: "He should be granted part of the point on the press -- though only part. The news media, no less than the nation, endured a wrenching trauma on 9/11 and no less than any other institution in society felt the moral obligation to demonstrate solidarity with a country under deadly threat." Then he declares, "In that situation, not giving the administration the benefit of the doubt, when it presented 'facts' it said were based on the best and most sensitive intelligence available from the CIA and other spy agencies, would have been mindlessly adversarial. Moreover, since the media lacked the ability to do original reporting on the ground in Iraq, what basis would there have been for contradicting the administration's assessment of Saddam Hussein's aims?"

They (the press) didn't just adopt the talking points, they internalized them.

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. In the wake of 9/11, many of the Fourth Estate

either abandoned their right to free press, or were pushed to do so by their employers.
To lose your position in the media, especially corporate media, is akin to being blackballed by that select, and often elite, society.

I know there were, and still are, many in the media world who would not bend to intimidation, nor follow the easier path of complacency in order to keep their jobs. I applaud them.

We read, see, and listen to their reports daily, and come to rely upon them for real and unbiased reporting. Yet, it is the corporate media that dominates what passes as "news" in this nation, as well as supporting the jingoism and propaganda as issued from the thugs who have placed a stranglehold on our nation, our people, and our Constitution. It is this current corporate domination, of what I can only call "yellow journalism", that shapes our elections, our laws, and insidiously frames the world for many viewers in the US.

Over many years, and perhaps more so than at any other time in our history especially during this administration, our nation, our form of democracy and its foundations have been bought and sold upriver all for the corporate.

We are an owned nation.
But, I will still keep fighting for my belief that we can yet bring this nation back to its real owners: the citizens of the United States.

I am hoping McClellan follows through with this tip of the iceberg revelation book.
I hope he does not capitulate or recant what he has taken the time to put into print.

I am going to read his book. I will be holding up a yardstick of what I know to be true to measure his statements of insight.

[wtmusic]

3. "A country under deadly threat"?

The US was under deadly threat after 9/11 -- from Iraq, which never attacked or even threatened to? News to me.