[A-List] US Media: Cleaning the Pool

["annewilliamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

Matt is an old friend from Moscow days, who consistently savaged -
rightly and correctly - the lame-brain Western media assigned to cover
the former USSR from his redoubt in the notorious pages of the eXile.
What a pleasure it was to read his astute comments this morning in The
New York Press from a link at www.lewrockwell.com.  -A.

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Cage Match
Matt Taibbi

Cleaning the Pool
The White House Press Corps politely grabs its ankles.

After watching George W. Bush's press conference last Thursday night, I'm
more convinced than ever: The entire White House press corps should be
herded into a cargo plane, flown to an altitude of 30,000 feet, and pushed
out, kicking and screaming, over the North Atlantic.

Any remaining staff at the Washington bureaus should be rounded up for
summary justice. The Russians used to use bakery trucks, big gray panel
trucks marked "Bread" on the sides; victims would be rounded up in the
middle of the night and taken for one last ride through the darkened
streets.

The war would almost be worth it just to see Wolf Blitzer pounding away at
the inside of a Pepperidge Farm truck, tearfully confessing and vowing to
"take it all back."

The Bush press conference to me was like a mini-Alamo for American
journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything
akin to a real function. Particularly revolting was the spectacle of the
cream of the national press corps submitting politely to the indignity of
obviously pre-approved questions, with Bush not even bothering to conceal
that the affair was scripted.

Abandoning the time-honored pretense of spontaneity, Bush chose the order of
questioners not by scanning the room and picking out raised hands, but by
looking down and reading from a predetermined list. Reporters, nonetheless,
raised their hands in between questions-as though hoping to suddenly catch
the president's attention.

In other words, not only were reporters going out of their way to make sure
their softballs were pre-approved, but they even went so far as to act on
Bush's behalf, raising their hands and jockeying in their seats in order to
better give the appearance of a spontaneous news conference.

Even Bush couldn't ignore the absurdity of it all. In a remarkable exchange
that somehow managed to avoid being commented upon in news accounts the next
day, Bush chided CNN political correspondent John King when the latter
overacted his part, too enthusiastically waving his hand when it apparently
was, according to the script, his turn anyway.

KING: "Mr. President."

BUSH: "We'll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted..."

A ripple of nervous laughter shot through the East Room. Moments later, the
camera angle of the conference shifted to a side shot, revealing a ring of
potted plants around the presidential podium. It would be hard to imagine an
image that more perfectly describes American political journalism today:
George Bush, surrounded by a row of potted plants, in turn surrounded by the
White House press corps.

Newspapers the next day ignored the scripted-question issue completely.
(King himself, incidentally, left it out of his CNN.com report.) Of the
major news services and dailies, only one-the Washington Post-even
parenthetically addressed the issue. Far down in Dana Millbank and Mike
Allen's conference summary, the paper euphemistically commented:

"The president followed a script of names in choosing which reporters could
ask him a question, and he received generally friendly questioning."
[Emphasis mine] "Generally friendly questioning" is an understatement if
there ever was one. Take this offering by April Ryan of the American Urban
Radio Networks:

"Mr. President, as the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations
like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through
the UN, how is your faith guiding you?"

Great. In Bush's first press conference since his decision to support a
rollback of affirmative action, the first black reporter to get a crack at
him-and this is what she comes up with? The journalistic equivalent of "Mr.
President, you look great today. What's your secret?"

Newspapers across North America scrambled to roll the highlight tape of Bush
knocking Ryan's question out of the park. The Boston Globe: "As Bush stood
calmly at the presidential lectern, tears welled in his eyes when he was
asked how his faith was guiding him." The Globe and Mail: "With tears
welling in his eyes, Mr. Bush said he prayed daily that war can be averted."

Even worse were the qualitative assessments in the major dailies of Bush's
performance. As I watched the conference, I was sure I was witnessing, live,
an historic political catastrophe. In his best moments Bush was deranged and
uncommunicative, and in his worst moments, which were most of the press
conference, he was swaying side to side like a punch-drunk fighter, at times
slurring his words and seemingly clinging for dear life to the verbal oases
of phrases like "total disarmament," "regime change," and "mass
destruction."

He repeatedly declined to answer direct questions. At one point, when a
reporter twice asked if Bush could consider the war a success if Saddam
Hussein were not captured or killed, Bush answered: "Uh, we will be changing
the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people."

Yet the closest thing to a negative characterization of Bush's performance
in the major outlets was in David Sanger and Felicity Barringer's New York
Times report, which called Bush "sedate": "Mr. Bush, sounding sedate at a
rare prime-time news conference, portrayed himself as the protector of the
country..."

Apparently even this absurdly oblique description, which ran on the Times
website hours after the press conference, was too much for the paper's
editors. Here is how that passage read by the time the papers hit the
streets the next morning:

"Mr. Bush, at a rare prime-time press conference, portrayed himself as the
protector of the country."

Meanwhile, those aspects of Bush's performance that the White House was
clearly anxious to call attention to were reported enthusiastically. It was
obvious that Bush had been coached to dispense with two of his favorite
public speaking tricks-his perma-smirk and his finger-waving cowboy
one-liners. Bush's somber new "war is hell" act was much commented upon,
without irony, in the post-mortems.

Appearing on Hardball after the press conference, Newsweek's Howard Fineman
(one of the worst monsters of the business) gushed when asked if the Bush we
'd just seen was really a "cowboy":

"If he's a cowboy he's the reluctant warrior, he's Shane. because he has to,
to protect his family."

Newsweek thinks Bush is Shane?

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 say 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.

Volume 16, Issue 11


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