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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (431)	2/24/2005 2:22:34 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 9838

Bob Davis: Nabobs no more 02-20-2005 It was an inside job. More than 30 years after Vice President Spiro Agnew included the press in his condemnation of “nattering nabobs of negativism,” conservatives have found a way to wound their rival. The battle to diminish a free press has gained more momentum in the past 12 months than in the past two decades. We know of three columnists who were on the payroll of agencies run by the Bush administration. The details vary surrounding the payments to conservative pundits Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, but there is one consistent theme. None of the three ever divulged that while they were portraying themselves as independent observers the government was compensating them. Equally serious is the case of Jeff Gannon. This “reporter,” who until recently worked for Talon News, was a useful fixture at White House briefings, always willing to lob a softball question when reporters put the squeeze on either the president or his spokesman. How soft? How about this from the president’s recent news conference: “Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you said you’re going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?” There’s Woodward, there’s Bernstein and then there’s Gannon, who made up the quote attributed to Reid. His question piqued the interest of bloggers, who started looking into his background. Initially, the most stunning revelation was that Gannon was someone else. His real name is James D. Guckert, and his employer, Talon News, is really a Web site run by a Republican booster from Texas. Not surprisingly, Gannon/Guckert didn’t do a lot of hard-hitting exposes while on the White House beat. Often, he simply regurgitated White House press releases. How could someone using a fake name and working for a dubious news outlet obtain a press pass allowing him frequent access to the White House? Then there are the “reporter’s” connections to a gay porn Web site, an angle widely reported last week. Pundits on the take. Reporters claiming employment at news organizations that are really fronts for a political party. And we haven’t even mentioned cable news organizations that act more like state-run media than independent watchdogs. Nor have we talked about the fake TV news stories put out by the Bush administration to tout its Medicare prescription drug plan. Hey, it’s not like legitimate news outlets don’t have enough problems. The New York Times, USA Today and CBS News have recently been shamed by not thoroughly vetting their work. Who can blame the Americans who throw up their hands and say no one can be trusted? Our country’s founders so valued the operation of a free press that would act as a check on the government that they enshrined its protection into the Constitution’s First Amendment. “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have governments without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,” Thomas Jefferson said. Since then, the model that has evolved is one of a media free of entanglements with government. It’s the norm for news reporters to act independently of country or government, even during a time of war. (The most glaring example to the contrary being Fox News’ cheerleading of American policy and frequent use of “our” when describing U.S. troops. Such boosterism works fine for propagandists and even editorialists, but is hardly the objectivity a reasonable viewer would expect from a news source.) The media’s adversarial role deepened during Watergate, at about the same time Agnew made his famous put-down of the press. In the modern era, no president, regardless of party or ideology, thought he had been given a free pass by the press corps. Still, it has been conservatives who have complained the loudest about the sins of the “liberal media.” In preparation for Bush’s second inaugural address, White House staffers consulted with Charles Krauthammer and Victor Davis Hanson, both conservatives and syndicated newspaper columnists. These two brilliant thinkers, along with others, met with presidential advisers. According to published reports, their minds were plumbed for ideas and opinions about Bush’s second term in the larger context of history. What both commentators must realize is that one can either be a presidential adviser or an independent commentator on the events of the world. It’s trickier to be both, especially when you don’t fully disclose that fact. What’s being done in small ways or larger ones is something that Agnew and his disciples would applaud. They are infecting the media beast from within, blurring the lines and damaging the work of serious journalists who take to heart the cause of fairness and objectivity. One can hear the ideologues opposed to a free press chuckling at the chaos they see all around them. They know that when Americans tune out and when news outlets fail to live up to their obligation to hold government accountable, then those who enjoy doing dark deeds in secret will prosper. About Bob Davis: Aliceville native Bob Davis is the editorial page editor for The Anniston Star. annistonstar.com