But she still has PBS to come in and cover for her. I saw her ask "What did he know and when did he know it" on tv. The media is taking the heat for her. Unbelieavable. The Clintons demand such loyalty from their followers, even to the point the followers are as devout and brainwashed as suicide bombers. And the intensity at which they strike out at those who have sense to wake up and smell the coffee, like Dick Morris, really make me question the portrait the media has painted of this man.
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The media hullabaloo over how the August 6, 2001 presidential intelligence briefing contained a hijacking warning President Bush failed to heed, was "phony" and "bogus," Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas contended on Inside Washington. He suggested: "The media beast was so happy to have a scandal here, that we jumped up and down and waved our arms and got all excited about it." NPR's Nina Totenberg conceded journalists were ahead of Democrats in trying to create an aura of scandal: "Nobody in the political establishment said 'what did they know and when did they know it?' That was us in the media."
The remarkable admissions, which indict the integrity of the Washington press corps, occurred on Inside Washington, a panel show produced by the Gannett-owned CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, WUSA-TV, and which is syndicated nationally so it runs on many PBS stations.
Thomas declared: "This may be one of these phony-bogus stories out of which something good actually happens. The incredible alarm everybody has about how Bush should have known -- all of that is baloney. But, if it does have the impact, if all this publicity, has the impact of making the FBI change its culture to actually talk to other agencies and talk amongst themselves better, if it really is a shock to the FBI system, to make them do that, that would be a positive outcome."
Newsweek's Evan Thomas conceded the "bogus" Bush briefing story was fomented by "the media beast...so happy to have a scandal"
Host Gordon Peterson, an anchor for WUSA-TV, was dumbstruck: "So the New York Times and the Washington Post are all falling for a fake and bogus story. Is that what you're saying?"
Thomas affirmed: "Yes, I think the media, that's exactly what I'm saying....It's not the Times and the Post so much. It's all of us. The media beast was so happy to have a scandal here, that we jumped up and down and waved our arms and got all excited about it."
Nina Totenberg blamed the Bush administration for the media's distortions: "Well that's because the media beast thinks, the media beast is starting to worry its given a pass for too long. But let me just say something, the Achilles heel of this administration is that it really is a secretive administration. Whether you're talking about DEA licenses for doctors that have been revoked or this sort of stuff..."
Totenberg soon conceded, however, that the media were ahead of Democrats in leading the charge: "Nobody in the political establishment said 'what did they know and when did they know it?' That was us in the media."
Thomas confirmed: "It was us."
Totenberg: "It really was us."
Those are remarkable admissions. On a story of such import, two veteran Washington reporters have charged that their colleagues put their personal interests and anger at the Bush administration ahead of accurate reporting.
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