News media elites still suffer from the vapors over Stephen Colbert’s masterful evisceration of them and their profession Saturday night. I do believe they feel insulted.
Someone should warn them to stay away from Eric Boehlert’s new book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush. Colbert only gave them indigestion; Boehlert will send them into apoplexy.
You can read the intro here and a large excerpt at Salon and True Blue Liberal. In this excerpt Boehlert focuses on the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. He argues that Bush could not have ordered the invasion without the help and approval of the MainStreamMedia. Here’s just a snip:
MSNBC was so nervous about employing an on-air liberal host opposing Bush’s ordered invasion that it fired Phil Donahue preemptively in 2003, after an internal memo pointed out the legendary talk show host presented “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” MSNBC executives would not confirm — nor deny — the existence of the report, which stressed the corporate discomfort Donahue’s show might present if it opposed the war while “at the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” By canning Donahue, MSNBC made sure that cable viewers had no place to turn for a nightly opinion program whose host forcefully questioned the invasion. The irony was that at the time of Donahue’s firing one month before bombs started falling on Baghdad, MSNBC officials cited the host’s weak ratings as the reason for the change. In truth, Donahue was beating out Chris Matthews as MSNBC’s highest-rated host.
Newspapers played it safe, too. In 2003 the Columbia Journalism Review called around to letters-page editors to gauge reader response to the looming war in Iraq and was told that at The Tennessean in Nashville letters were running 70 percent against the war, but that the newspaper was trying to run as many pro-war letters as possible in order to avoid accusations of bias [emphasis added].
And who would have accused them of bias? The VRWC, of course.
Indeed, between the time Bush first included Iraq as part of the “axis of evil” in January 2002, and the time the invasion commenced in March 2003, the MSM didn’t seem to know how to cover those who opposed the war. The press just wanted the protesters to go away. Maybe because, as influential broadcast news consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates informed its clients, covering antiwar protesters turned off news consumers, according to its survey. On October 26, 2004, antiwar protesters staged a massive rally in Washington, D.C., drawing more than 100,000 people from across the country. The next day in a small piece on page 8 that was accompanied by a photo larger than the article itself, the New York Times reported falsely that “fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for.”
This reminds me of Peter Daou’s “triangle” theory. Years ago the Right established a power triangle of blogs and online forums like Free Republic, news media, and the Republican political establishment to hammer the American public relentlessly with their messages and talking points. That’s how they were able to dominate mass media and our national political discourse, and that’s how they came to dominate Washington, DC. Those outside the VRWC triangle, even when they represent a majority opinion, are rendered voiceless. We leftie bloggers are, slowly, making some inroads, but it’s been an uphill struggle.
Boehlert describes “Hardball” on March 6, 2003, a few days before the invasion:
“Hardball’s” Chris Matthews hosted a full hour of discussion. In order to get a wide array of opinion, he invited a pro-war Republican senator (Saxby Chambliss, from Georgia), a pro-war former Secretary of State (Lawrence Eagleburger), a pro-war retired Army general (Montgomery Meigs), pro-war retired Air Force general (Buster Glosson), a pro-war Republican pollster (Frank Luntz), as well as, for the sake of balance, somebody who, twenty-five years earlier, once worked in Jimmy Carter’s White House (Pat Caddell).
As I remember it, on those rare occasions when someone timidly expressed a note of caution about the invasion, some rightie goon at his elbow would interrupt with a high-volume recitation of the fear-mongering talking points du jour. Any attempt at an actual critical discussion of the war was shouted down.
To oppose the invasion vocally was to be outside the media mainstream and to invite scorn. Like some nervous Democratic members of Congress right before the war, MSM journalists and pundits seemed to scramble for political cover so as to not subject themselves to conservative catcalls. One year later, a pro-war writer for Slate conceded he was “embarrassed” by his support for the ill-fated invasion but he insisted, “you’ve got to take risks.” But supporting the war posed no professional risk. The only MSM risks taken at the time of the invasion were by pundits who staked out an unambiguous position in opposing the war. Bush’s rationale for war — Saddam Hussein, sitting on a swelling stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, posing a grave and imminent threat to America — turned out to be untrue. And for that, the press must shoulder some blame. Because the MSM not only failed to ask pressing questions, or raise serious doubts about the White House’s controversial WMD assertion, but in some high-profile instances, such as with Judith Miller’s reporting for the New York Times, the MSM were responsible for spreading the White House deceptions about Saddam’s alleged stockpile; they were guilty of “incestuous amplification,” as former Florida senator Senator Bob Graham called it. Being meek and timid and dictating administration spin amidst a wartime culture is one thing. But to be actively engaged in the spin, to give it a louder and more hysterical voice, is something else all together. In fact, the compliant press repeated almost every administration claim about the threat posed to America by Saddam. The fact that virtually every one of those claims turned out to be false only added to the media’s malpractice.
This malpractice was ongoing before the invasion, of course, it played a large role in the 2000 election campaigns, as Digby noted:
When the media treated Al Gore like a circus clown and overlooked the fact that George W. Bush was a gibbering idiot (and admitted openly that they did it for fun) I held in my intemperate remarks because I thought it would harm the party in the long run if we attacked the press as the Republicans do. When they reported the election controversy as if it would create a constitutional crisis if the nation had to wait more than a month to find out whether they had the right president I kept my own counsel. After all, who would defend democracy when something truly serious happened?
After 9/11 when they helped the president promote the idea that the country was at “war” (with what we didn’t exactly know) I knew it was a terrible mistake and would lead to a distorted foreign policy and twisted domestic politics. But I didn’t blame the media because it was very difficult to fight that at the time. They’re human, after all.
And when they helped the government make their case for this misbegotten war in Iraq, I assumed that they knew what they were talking about. After all, I had been defending their credibility for years now, in spite of everything I’ve mentioned. If they would screw up something like this, then for what was I holding back my criticism? This was the most serious issue this country had faced in many a decade.
When no WMD were found and I was informed that the NY Times had assigned a neocon shill to report the story, and then defended her when she was implicated in a white house smear to cover up its lies going into Iraq, I no longer saw any need to defend them or any other mainstream media outlet who had rah-rahed the country into Iraq because of promises of embedded glory on the battlefield and in the ratings.
This is fifteen long years of watching the Times and the rest of the mainstream media buckle under the pressure of GOP accusations that they are biased, repeatedly take bogus GOP manufactured scandals and run with them like kids with a brand new kite, treat our elections like they are entertainment vehicles for bored reporters and generally kowtow to the Republican establishment as the path of least resistance. I waited for years for them to recognise what was happening and fight back for their own integrity. It didn’t happen. And I began to see that the only way to get the press to work properly was to apply equal pressure from the opposite direction. It’s a tug of war. They were not strong enough to resist being dragged off to the right all by themselves. They needed some flamethrowers from our side pulling in the opposite direction to make it possible for them to avoid being pulled all the way over.
During the Florida recount debacle reporters stood aside and allowed Republican operatives like Howard Baker to lie to TV cameras without being corrected. And through most of the Bush Administration the press was little more than a conduit for the GOP propaganda machine. I’ve seen a change since Katrina, but it hasn’t changed enough.
Ironically, Jack Shafer at Slate writes that “many journalists” believe “the Bush administration has declared war on the press.”
Do the Bushies disrespect the press? Give them the runaround when they ask questions of the White House press office? Has the administration sown disinformation, overclassified, reclassified the previously declassified, tightened FOIA, and paid pundits to carry its water?
A million times yes.
Yet stonewalling, investigating the sources of leaks, intimidating reporters with visits from FBI agents, and otherwise making reporters’ lives miserable aren’t tantamount to a Bush war on the press. Instead of backing the combat metaphor, I subscribe to Jay Rosen’s more modest diagnosis of an ongoing administration strategy to “decertify” the press from its role as purveyor of news and information. By attacking the press corps’ credibility and legitimacy, the Bush administration expects to frame the national debate—make that “eliminate the national debate.”
This is not a new development. You might remember the Great Media Blitz of October 2003. The Bushies seem to have decided news coverage of Iraq had lost that lovin’ feelin’. Here’s a snip of an Associated Press story of October 13, 2003, no longer online:
President Bush, annoyed by what he considers the “filter” of news reporting, will seek to go around the press on Monday through television outlets that do not routinely cover the White House.
Bush was giving a series of interviews to make the case that the situation in Iraq is getting better.
I’m sorry I didn’t preserve the rest of the story. But as I recall Condi and Dick and the rest of the crew more or less boycotted national media, and for a few days they spoke only to reporters from local and regional news outlets and to sympathizers like the Heritage Foundation in order to paint rosy pictures of progress in Iraq. The result was that for a few days the Administration’s message just about dropped off the radar screen altogether, and soon the “blitz” was quietly abandoned. Of course the Bushies still look for ways to catapult the propaganda past the news media establishment whenever it can, but they haven’t yet been able to cut it out of the picture altogether. Shafer continues,
The best journalists practice judo, using their foes’ brute force against them. Every time the Bush administration cracks down on openness, it creates new sources for journalists inside the bureaucracies. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, says the strategy of decertifying the press works only if you can block the press from obtaining alternative sources of information. That’s something the administration hasn’t been able to do, says Blanton, citing the blockbuster stories about the Bush’s secret prisons, secret torture programs, secret rendition operation, warrantless wiretaps, and so on.
This means, of course, getting information from whistleblowers and leakers, and the VRWC triangle is working overtime to plant the idea that whistleblowers and leakers and journalists who talk to them are traitors. Never mind that when that source of information dries up we’re pretty much done for as a democracy. Try explaining that to a rightie. Or try explaining that to a tree stump, which is equally futile.
Sidney Blumenthal recaps some of Colbert’s monologue in the Guardian‘s “Comment Is Free” blog.
After his mock praise of Bush as a rock against reality, Colbert censured the press by flattering its misfeasance. “Over the last five years you people were so good – over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out … Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions … The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spellcheck and go home … Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!”.
This wasn’t meant to be funny.
Some in the press understand the peril posed to the first amendment by an imperial president trying to smother the system of checks and balances. For those of the Washington press corps who shunned a court jester for his irreverence, status is more urgent than the danger to liberty. But it’s no laughing matter.
I don’t doubt the press corp thinks it don’t get no respect. But they’ve only themselves to blame. They still have the power and the means to report the truth, if only they’d get over themselves and use it.
Update: See “The Fox News Effect” — Bush owes his presidency to Faux Nooz.
Update update: See also Dan Froomkin.
t’s true that Colbert and Stewart have a lot of fans within the press corps who appreciate and maybe even envy their freedom to call it like they see it.
But I think that message was just too much for the self-satisfied upper crust of the media elite to handle when Colbert threw it right in their faces on Saturday night.
Here they were, holding a swanky party for themselves, and Colbert was essentially telling them that they’ve completely screwed up their number one job these past six years. Is it any surprise they were defensive?
