From The American Prospect, 3/1/04:
http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V15/3/alterman-e.html
Wake-Up Time
Yes, Bush has bullied the national media.
But are they really powerless?
Only if they play along.
Herewith, five suggestions for how the Fourth Estate can stop the
charade.
Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky
Are our national media -- schoolyard silly during campaign 2000, by
turns somnolent and sycophantic ever since -- starting to rouse
themselves from their long torpor?
It's still way too early to answer that question with a "yes," but if
that's what the answer turns out to be, the first week of February may
have marked a turning point.
In that week, the media started raising new questions about the
justification for the Iraq War;
broke an important story about the administration knowing last fall
that the Medicare bill would cost $134 billion more than it let on to
its employers (the public);
broke another about a probe of alleged bribes at ***** Cheney's
Halliburton; and finally,
led by The Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, started to take a
semi-meaningful look into George W. Bush's disputed National Guard
record.
Don't start dancing to the music just yet, though.
Bad habits die hard, and we've all come to expect too little genuine
journalism and far too much of what might be called
"journalism-related program activity."
This is what we got back in 2000, when Al Gore was deemed a lying SOB
for statements he made that were wholly accurate.
(Gore did play a large role in creating the predecessor to the
Internet, he did hold the hearings that "discovered" contamination at
Love Canal, and his only mistake regarding that most crucial of "lies"
about who inspired the characters in Erich Segal's Love Story was
accurately recalling a decades-old mistaken story in The Tennessean.)
Remember, he was running against a guy who couldn't remember a year of
his military service or anything connected with a million-dollar
bailout he received regarding a fishy stock sale during which he was
privy to inside information about the same stock's likely collapse.
But hardly anyone thought those questions worth examining.
That was campaign 2000: almost no investigation of Bush's past and
aggressive misrepresentation in his favor when the stories finally did
come up.
Karl Rove couldn't have asked for anything more.
We understand:
It's tough out there.
Campaign reporters have grueling jobs and can't always be expected to
produce big-picture journalism.
In the Bush White House, meanwhile, journalists have been forced to do
their jobs under profoundly onerous conditions.
In his much-discussed January 19 New Yorker article, Ken Auletta
detailed the multiple ways in which the Bush administration has
successfully shackled reporters.
Among the straitjacket techniques detailed there and elsewhere:
limited (or no) access, interviews granted on restrictive terms, rare
presidential press conferences, and substance-less "availabilities" in
which reporters get to ask Bush two or three questions, which they
have been told had best relate to the topic Bush wants to discuss.
The reporters described by Auletta's diligent reporting seem to
believe themselves all but powerless to resist.
Come now.
This isn't Pacifica Radio we're discussing here.
These are the largest, richest, most powerful media corporations in
the world, billion-dollar babies with plenty of resources at their
disposal.
What's one presidential administration to them?
____________________________________________________
In the general scheme of things what *does* one presidential
administration mean the billion-dollar babies? They're never seem to
be at a loss for resources.
Harry
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