Democracy NOW! -- White House Press Corps is now the Press Agency
"This is an insane risk taken by the President in the ambition of getting re-elected. I don't see why the press corps has to be party to that,"
democracynow.org
“The White House Press Corps Has Turned Into a Full Time Press Agency For The President” – Harpers’ Rick MacArthur on Bush’s Secretive Thanksgiving Trip to Iraq
Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harpers and author of the book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda In the Gulf War.
amazon.com.
TRANSCRIPT:
AMY GOODMAN: Just before today’s program, I reached Rick Macarthur, the publisher of Harper's magazine, author of the book Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Iraq War, and asked his impression of this trip.
RICK MACARTHUR: Well, the remarkable thing about it is the press – the White House press corps anyway, has now turned into…has turned to full time press agency for the President of the United States. The proper thing to do in this case is to refuse the secrecy agreement and say we're not going to be participants in a photo opportunity, which is merely done to help your re-election campaign, and if that aborts the trip, well, it aborts the trip.
Now, that is one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is as a needless risk taken by Bush. Now, suppose there had been Iraqi guerrillas on the ground near the airport and they just happened to be setting up to shoot at another plane and here comes Airforce One or whatever plane they were on, and they hit the President's plane? That also would have been a legitimate reason to abort the trip. This is an insane risk taken by the President in the ambition of getting re-elected. I don't see why the press corps has to be party to that, either. So, there are a couple of arguments for refusing to take the agreement, but in this case, of course, the White House press corps, being what it is, they went along for the ride and agreed to play press agent.
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