Here's a piece on that subject that I was just reading. Didn't plan to post it but since you raised the subject...
I suggest you click on the link to read it because the paragraph formatting doesn't come across on SI.
"Is The Press Stuck In A Time-Tunnel In Cheney Shooting Case Anger?
by Joe Gandelman
So many reporters are furious in Vice President Dick Cheney's actions surrounding the shooting of a hunting companion: Cheney ignored the national media and gave info to a local paper, delayed disclosure of the incident and then, in the ultimate slap in the face, gave an exclusive interview to one of his favorite reporters (Brit Hume) on his favorite cable news network (conservative Fox news). And he skipped a big press conference entirely.
Is it all happenstance? Journalism professor/blogger Jay Rosen, who writes perhaps the best media criticism and analysis on any weblog on the Internet on his Press Think site, says it most certainly is not.
His post here needs to be read IN FULL but let's take a look at some of his key points. He starts by quoting the comments of Marlin Fitzwater, a loyal GOPer who was press secretary to former President Ronald Reagan and George Bush (41 — the prequel) and writes:
(Fitzwater) was livid. “It is all Cheney,” he told Editor & Publisher. “He is the key that has to start all this.” Fitzwater explained what is supposed to happen. The Vice President’s press secretary acts as a kind of journalist within the Cheney camp....
....Well, it’s not beyond me. The way I look at it, Cheney took the opportunity to show the White House press corps that it is not the natural conduit to the nation-at-large; and it has no special place in the information chain. Cheney does not grant legitimacy to the large news organizations with brand names who think of themselves as proxies for the public and its right to know. Nor does he think the press should know where he is, what he’s doing, or who he’s doing it with.
His first home run. It's a question of accepting the late 20th century conventional wisdom that the national press is the messenger and that the filter it provides is a necessary evil for politicians who don't like its set of assumptions.
Rosen notes that the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (and yours truly also, by the way, but he doesn't mention us in this context) considered the way the White House and Cheney handled this story as a monumental "misfire" — a perception shared by many public relations experts as well.
But, Rosen points out, that's missing a key point of what happened this week:
How does it hurt Bush if for three days this week reporters are pummeling Scott McClellan over the details of when they were informed about Cheney’s hunting accident? That’s three days this week they won’t be pummeling Scott McClellan over the details of this article from Foreign Affairs by Paul R. Pillar, the ex-CIA man who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year.
Here’s what the article says: “During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq… the Bush administration disregarded the community’s expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.” Pillar was there; if anyone would know he would.
And, yes, indeed: we do have a kind of attention deficit press (and blog community) which gets stirred up about X issue but issues Y and Z may also be as (or more) important and they fall by the wayside. It's a matter of limited attention and energy and, in the case of the news media, less about limited resources (they have the bucks, unlike bloggers). MORE:
The handling of the news that Cheney shot someone is consistent with many things we know about the Vice President— and about the Bush Administration’s policies toward the press. Though I admire his professionalism, I wish Fitzwater were a little less appalled and a little more attuned to the new set of rules put in place by the Bush White House, especially the rules for Dick Cheney.
The public visibility of the presidency itself is under revision, Marvin. More of it lies in shadow all the time. Non-communication has become the standard procedure, not a breakdown in practice but the essence of it. What Dan Froomkin calls the Bush Bubble is designed to keep more of the world out. Cheney himself is almost a shadow figure in the executive branch. His whereabouts are often not known. With these changes, executive power has grown more illegible under Bush the Younger— a sign of the times in Washington.
This is no secret. Even from the first months of the Bush administration it was widely reported that the new administration had decided to change some things about the way they would deal with the press and even the perception of what the White House press corps represents. Rosen touches on this with this KEY quote:
Meanwhile, the reclamation of powers lost to the executive branch after Vietnam and Watergate goes on; Cheney is known to be the driver. When this project reaches the press it turns into what I have called rollback— “Back ‘em up, starve ‘em down, and drive up their negatives.” Cheney’s methods after the hunting accident were classics in rollback thinking.
Rosen correctly points out that if you step back and look at it, little of what Cheney did and how he did it is something the Veep would consider a mistake. It all fits within his world view of a changing political, societal and infomedia context. MORE:
Press thinkers, Dick Cheney did not make a mistake. He followed procedure— his procedure...Cheney has long held the view that the powers of the presidency were dangerously eroded in the 1970s and 80s. The executive “lost” perogatives it needed to gain back for the global struggle with Islamic terror....
...Some of that space was lost to the news media, and its demand to be informed about all aspects of the presidency, plus its sense of entitlement to the star interlocutor’s role. Cheney opposes all that, whereas Fitzwater accepted most of it. That’s why Fitz is appalled and Cheney is rather pleased with himself.
In short: the press and many of administration critics expect Cheney & Co to play by "the rules" but this administration (on several fronts) has no problem changing the rules if it doesn't like them.
So when the press is furious and beats up on the hapless Scott McClellan is it a "given" that viewers will be angry at Cheney and the White House? Rosen again:
The people yelling questions at Scott McClellan in the briefing room, like the reporters in the Washington bureaus who cover the president, are in Cheney’s calculations neither a necessary evil, nor a public good. They are an unnecessary evil and a public bad— ex-influentials who can be disrespected without penalty.
It's again the backlash against entitlement. Journalists who dream of brand, new, protective Shield Laws are deluding themselves since there is a lot of resentment out there aimed at reporters. Ask any reporter or former reporter (like me) and they'll confirm it.
How are reporters generally portrayed in films by Hollywood moviemakers, who are generally considered liberal? As a pack of loud, pushy people shouting questions that are almost predictable. In politics, perception is essentially REALITY. MORE:
I found something disingenuous about the performance of the White House press this week. Like when David Gregory of NBC News asked McClellan, “Does the President think it’s appropriate for the Vice President to essentially make decisions at odds with the public disclosure process of this White House?” This was an attempt to exploit the tensions between McClellan’s office and Cheney’s office after McClellan said he would have handled the news differently.
Tensions in the White House staff are fun to cover, but when that story dies down in a day or two journalists will be back where they were— pretending that we’re still in a recognizable universe, where to meet the press is to face the nation, and the White House sooner or later has to disclose.
The bottom line debate is over: what IS the public's "right to know" — and who is entitled to be the one to tell them what the public what have a right to know...and why are they entitled to that right?
Meanwhile, Knight Ridder Newspapers takes on this theme as well:
To many on the outside, it looked like a mistake when Vice President Dick Cheney failed to notify the White House press corps first of his shooting accident. But in the White House, it reflected a strategy of marginalizing the press.
More than ever, the Bush White House ignores traditional news media and presents its message through friendly alternatives, such as talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
And when a reporter appears belligerent in a televised confrontation with the White House spokesman, as NBC's David Gregory did this week, the imagery helps the administration turn the story into one about the press, which energizes a Republican base that hates the media anyway.
More than just a matter of sniping at an enemy, the Bush administration sees the traditional media as hostile. Working to erode their legitimacy in the public's eyes is a critical element of its determination to weaken checks on its power.
KRN notes that Rush Limbaugh echoed the White House line:"This is not about Dick Cheney. It's about the media." And it goes on to say:
This White House isn't afraid to anger the press. Rather, it appears to relish it....Conservative bloggers echoed that line of attack, despite firm statements from loyal Republicans such as former Defense Department spokeswoman Torie Clarke and former White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, who both said that Cheney had acted irresponsibly by not immediately disclosing to the nation that he'd shot someone.
Live TV broadcasts of news briefings also help the White House manipulate the media. Pundits, bloggers and talk-show hosts often spend more time criticizing reporters' questions than the issues they're raising. And reporters probing aggressively for information from polite but unresponsive officials can look like snarling jackals.
"Ideally, televising the briefings should add to the transparency of the White House. But it's become less. It's how the White House can use the event to its advantage," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
"It's another staged event. And the journalists in the briefing room are playing the role the White House wants them to play, as adversaries."
Bottom line: There are now ways to bypass the traditional media filter. And if this is indeed the new way of operating, it stands to reason that a Democratic administration one day could choose to do the same thing."
themoderatevoice.com |
