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Topic: Media response to the "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush's "propaganda" (Read 702 times) |
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Hermit
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Media response to the "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush's "propaganda"
« on: 2008-06-06 10:02:45 » |
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Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war
[ Hermit : In the aftermath of the Cheney/Bush administrations Propagandist-in-Chief, Scott McClellan's, description of his efforts to sell the war, it is rather fun to see some of the entertainment clowns, who act as journalists in the US, dancing around their role in disseminating the insanity of the Bush years. As I have mentioned at least once before, the Nuremburg trials set the precedent that enablers of wars of aggression could be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity - which means that come the revolution, these bozos and their bosses should be on trial along with the fascist juanta. Of course, the fascinating appointment of voting machine related people as electoral officials throughout the US may be an indicator that the revolution is to be postponed yet again. If so this poor country will get an already senile before taking office president with a self admitted inability to comprehend economics and a very Bush like appreciation of the niceties of near-dictatorial powers. A very American virtue to be sure.
Please note that aside from the comments (in color), the highlighting is by Glenn Greenwald and was in the original.]
Source: Salon.com
[b]Authors: Glenn Greenwald
Dated: 2008-05-28 (and 2008-06-06)
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books: "How Would a Patriot Act?" (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, and "A Tragic Legacy" (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy. His third book, "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics", examines the manipulative electoral tactics used by the GOP and propagated by the establishment press, and will be released in April, 2008, by Random House/Crown.
I was going to add this as an update to my prior post on Scott McClellan's extraordinary description of the media as "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush administration "propaganda," but it should really stand on its own. Here is an absolutely amazing link to a video where the three network news anchors appeared jointly on The Today Show this morning and were forced by McClellan's book to address whether the media failed in its duties in the run-up to the war -- the first time, to my knowledge, that this topic has ever been broached by network news journalists (h/t Kitt). The fact that television news has blacked-out the whole issue until now is, by itself, rather amazing.
While Katie Couric impressively argued that the media did fail to do its job -- pointing out that the White House threatened networks which were perceived to be too critical with cutting off access to the war and that anyone who questioned the war was deemed unpatriotic and all of that "affected the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media" -- the painfully empty-headed Charlie Gibson and the mindlessly establishment-defending Brian Williams both insisted that the media did a perfectly fine job and that they would do nothing different. "There was a lot of skepticism raised about" the Colin Powell speech, said Gibson, in one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV. He continued:I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System [group giggles]. I think the questions were asked. . . . I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials for asking questions they didn't feel comfortable with.
It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions.
Indeed. Perish the thought that journalists should be adversarial to our political officials, challenge what they say or point out when they're lying. Instead, their job is merely to pose polite questions, let political officials say what they want in response, and then go home -- just as Charlie Gibson said. This is why most establishment journalists will never be convinced that they failed to do their job, no matter how much evidence is presented: because of the understanding they have of what "their job" actually is. If anything, by Gibson's understanding of what they're supposed to be doing, they did their job brilliantly, by letting Bush officials go on their shows and -- as Cheney aide Cathy Martin said about what happens when they went on Tim Russert -- "allow[ing Bush officials] to control the message."
As I often do, I'll use this 2005 speech by the great David Halberstam, delivered at the Columbia School of Journalism, to illustrate how rancid and worthless our establishment journalists of today are -- especially the TV stars like Gibson and Williams. Halberstam observed that "by and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are," and recounted that his proudest moment in his career was when, as a young reporter in Saigon, he stood down a General in Vietnam who was attempting to threaten and intimidate him from independently investigating claims that the Pentagon was making about the war. Halberstam apparently didn't share Gibson's aversion to "debating" government officials.
Back in 1999, Halberstam wrote: "Somewhere in there, gradually, but systematically, there has been an abdication of responsibility within the profession, most particularly in the networks." He continued:Television's gatekeepers, at a time when a fragmenting audience threatens the singular profits of the past, stopped being gatekeepers and began to look the other way on moral and ethical and journalistic issues. Less and less did they accept the old-fashioned charge for what they owed the country.
The viewpoint seemed to be -- from their testing and polling -- that the American people did not want to know what was going on, so why bother them with unwanted facts too soon? So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time. The arc of our country and its media: from David Halberstam's confrontation with a U.S. General in Vietnam over his demands to investigate (rather than mindlessly accept) the Pentagon's war claims to Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams sitting around giggling on TV with Matt Lauer and muttering about what a great job they did in covering the administration's march to invade Iraq, when even Bush's own Press Secretary mocks them for being weak, complicit little mouthpieces for government propaganda. That damned Liberal Media.
UPDATE: Concerning this statement by Gibson -- "You go back to the Powell speech. There was a lot of skepticism raised about that" -- I just described it as "one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV." But when I wrote that, I hadn't gone back and read what Gibson and his Good Morning America colleagues were saying at the time about the Powell speech. Now that I've done that, I realize that I was far too kind in describing Gibson's comment.
On February 6, 2003 -- the day of Powell's speech -- Gibson had on as guests former CIA Director James Woolsey and Terence Taylor of the International Institute For Strategic Studies to analyze Powell's claims. Here are some of the super-tough, skeptical questions Gibson asked:- Terence Taylor, let me start with you. Specifically, of all the biological and chemical weapons that he outlined, and the means of delivery, what's the most frightening? Should be the most frightening?
- Question number two that was in my mind. James Woolsey, he showed intercepts, he showed photo intelligence. He talked about human resources that we had. How much intelligence was compromised?
- On a scale of one to 10, one being the most sanitized of intelligence information and 10 being laying out all our intelligence ammunition, where was he yesterday on the scale?
- Terence Taylor, as I look at some of the pictures that we were talking about just a moment ago with James Woolsey, the pictures dramatic in that they show Iraqi trucks pulling away from sites virtually as the, as the inspectors trucks are pulling up. How compromised are the inspectors there? Are they totally infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence?
Here's how the segment ended:
CHARLES GIBSON
James Woolsey, the Iraqis immediately challenged a lot of what was shown, said it was altered, said it was doctored. The international community -- do they know that stuff was genuine?
JAMES WOOLSEY
Oh, anybody who is objective about this I think does. The people who now doubt whether or not Saddam really has WMD programs, chemical and bacteriological, in particular, are really of two types, either they work for Saddam or they're doing a human imitation of an ostrich. There really are, I think, no other possibilities. [ Hermit : Or as those not deluded by a surfeit of Fox, channeling Cheney/Bush or doing a human imitation of an ostrich saw fairly soon after that, they were correct. ]
CHARLES GIBSON
James Woolsey, former CIA Director, Terence Taylor, former weapons inspector, I thank you both.
Oh, the "skepticism" is just so bountiful. The administration must have been just furious with Gibson for his tough, skeptical questions. Later in the show, Diane Sawyer introduced Gibson at the top of the hour and he said: "I'm Charles Gibson in New York. We're gonna have more reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations. It was very direct, it was detailed, it was comprehensive." That's just scathing commentary by Gibson.
On the same show, Diane Sawyer introduced Martha Raddatz to talk about the Powell speech, and Raddatz promptly said things like this: "Good morning, Diane. Secretary Powell laid out a strong case against Saddam Hussein," and like this: "Powell said Iraq moved weapons to avoid detection. Satellite imagery, he said, shows a storage area for chemical weapons," and like this: "Powell also said evidence indicates that Iraq may have 25,000 liters of anthrax, has two of three components needed to build a nuclear bomb, and has ties to and harbors al Qaeda." [ Hermit : Of course, there are a few people who still sufficiently delusional to take this as gospel - and rather more who attempt to argue over the facts that this is what the "intelligence" claimed at the time. The trouble is that even ignoring what people like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix (who were close enough to Iraq to be sure of what they were saying, no matter what they were called by trolls and fools), that enough Bush Administration insiders, including Colin Powell, have apologized for their roles in spicing the propaganda for us to know that any claims to an "honest error" are merely examples of denial in action. ]
They then cut to Condoleezza Rice saying: "The Iraqis know what they need to do. And a little bit here and a little there is not going to get it done." Raddatz concluded: "Powell's presentation walked a delicate line between revealing new information and protecting methods of intelligence gathering." There was not a single syllable uttered that questioned any of this and, needless to say, no dissenting voices were heard. [ Hermit : A lie of course. There were "dissenting voices" including many in America. They just never made it through the American media filters. ]
But this morning, Charlie Gibson specifically points to the tough, skeptical reporting he did with regard to Powell's U.N. speech to prove what a great job the media did. Worst of all, that they think they did a good job means they'll not do anything different in the future.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Media response to the "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush's "propaganda
« Reply #1 on: 2008-06-06 11:24:00 » |
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McClellan and the Media 'Enablers'
Source: Consortium News
Authors: Jeff Cohen
Dated: 2008-05-31
Editor’s Note: Scott McClellan’s new book may be welcome in that it corroborates many claims from George W. Bush’s critics. But it’s still galling that so many prominent journalists who bowed before Bush’s bullying in 2002-03 have only seen their careers flourish.
In this guest essay, media critic Jeff Cohen revisits the journalistic cowardice before the Iraq invasion even though many media stars would prefer Americans not remember:
Jeff Cohen is a recovering TV pundit, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.
No sooner had Bush’s ex-press secretary (now author) Scott McClellan accused President Bush and his other former collaborators of misleading our country into Iraq than the squeals of protest turned into a mighty roar.
I’m not talking about the vitriol directed at him by former White House colleagues like Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer. I’m talking about McClellan’s other erstwhile war collaborators: the movers and shakers in corporate media.
The people McClellan refers to in his book as “deferential, complicit enablers” of Bush administration war propaganda.
One after another, news stars defended themselves with the tired old myth that no one doubted the Iraq WMD claims at the time. The yarn about hindsight being 20/20 was served up more times than a Rev. Wright clip on Fox News.
Katie Couric, whose coverage on CBS of the Iraq troop surge has been almost fawning, was one of the few stars to be candid about pre-invasion coverage, saying days ago, “I think it’s one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.”
She spoke of “pressure” from corporate management, not just Team Bush, to “really squash any dissent.” Then a co-host of NBC Today, she says network brass criticized her for challenging the administration.
NBC execs apparently didn’t complain when – two weeks into the invasion – Couric thanked a Navy commander for coming on the show, adding, “And I just want you to know, I think Navy SEALs rock!”
This is a glorious moment for the American public. We can finally see those who abandoned reporting for cheerleading and flag-waving and cheap ratings having to squirm over their role in sending other parents’ kids into Iraq.
I say “other parents’ kids” because I never met any bigwig among those I worked with in TV news who had kids in the armed forces.
Given how TV networks danced to the White House tune sung by the Roves and Fleischers and McClellans in the first years of W’s reign, it’s fitting that it took the words of a longtime Bush insider to force their self-examination over Iraq.
Top media figures had shunned years of well-documented criticism of their Iraq failure as religiously as they shunned war critics in 2003.
'We're Going to Own That Country'
Speaking of religious, it wasn’t until two days ago that retired NBC warhorse Tom Brokaw was able to admit on-air that Bush’s push toward invasion was “more theology than anything else.”
On day one of the war, it was anchor Brokaw who turned to an Admiral and declared, “One of the things that we don’t want to do is destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, because in a few days we’re going to own that country.”
Asked this week about the charge that media transmitted war propaganda, Brokaw blamed the White House and its “unbelievable ability to control the flow of information at any time, but especially during the time that they’re preparing to go to war.”
This is an old canard: The worst censors pre-war were not governments, but major outlets that chose to exclude and smear dissenting experts.
Wolf Blitzer, whose persona on CNN is that of a carnival barker, defended his network’s coverage: “I think we were pretty strong. But certainly, with hindsight, we could have done an even better job.”
Coverage might have been better if CNN news chief Eason Jordan hadn’t gotten a Pentagon “thumbs-up” on the retired generals they featured.
Or if Jordan hadn’t gone on the air to dismiss a dissenting WMD expert: “Scott Ritter's chameleon-like behavior has really bewildered a lot of people. . . . U.S. officials no longer give Scott Ritter much credibility.”
ABC anchor Charlie Gibson, the closest thing to a Fox News anchor at a big three network, took offense at McClellan: “I think the media did a pretty good job.”
With the “drumbeat” coming from the administration, “it was not our job to debate them,” said Gibson. He claimed “there was a lot of skepticism raised” about Colin Powell’s pre-war U.N. speech.
Media critic Glenn Greenwald called Gibson’s claim “one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV“ – and made his point using Gibson’s unskeptical Powell coverage [ Hermit : Supra ] at the time.
In February 2003, there was huge mainstream media skepticism about Powell’s U.N. speech . . . overseas. But U.S. TV networks banished antiwar perspectives in the crucial two weeks surrounding that error-filled speech.
Fractional Criticism
FAIR studied all on-camera sources on the nightly ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS newscasts: Less than 1 percent – 3 out of 393 sources – were antiwar. Only 6 percent were skeptical sources.
This at a time when 60 percent of Americans in polls wanted more time for diplomacy and inspections.
I worked 10-hour days inside MSNBC’s newsroom during this period as senior producer of Phil Donahue’s primetime show (cancelled three weeks before the war while the network’s most-watched program).
Trust me: too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable offense. I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side.
I watched a fellow producer get chewed out for booking a 50-50 show.
At MSNBC, I heard Scott Ritter smeared – on-air and off – as a paid mouthpiece of Saddam Hussein. After we had war skeptic and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on the show, we learned he was on some sort of network blacklist.
When MSNBC terminated Donahue, it was expected that we’d be replaced by a nightly show hosted by Jesse Ventura. But that show never really launched.
Ventura says it was because he, like Donahue, opposed the Iraq invasion; he was paid millions for not appearing.
Another MSNBC star, Ashleigh Banfield, was demoted and then lost her job after criticizing the first weeks of “very sanitized” war coverage. With every muzzling, self-censorship tended to proliferate.
I’m no defender of Scott McClellan. Some may say he has blood on his hands – and that he hasn’t earned any kind of redemption.
But as someone who still burns with anger over what I witnessed inside TV news during that crucial historical moment, I’m trying my best to enjoy this falling out among thieves and liars.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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