Tim Russert: Journamalist

Dana Milbank writes:

Dana Milbank - In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR - washingtonpost.com: Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president... Cathie Martin... on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used.

Dana gets two things wrong in these four paragraphs. First, Cheney doesn't "think" he controls Russert: Cheney does control Russert. Cheney's press aide Cathie Martin is correct when she says that Russert will not push Cheney or attempt to closely question him.

Second, the trial does not confirm "some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters." The reporters have no suspicions about how they are used by the Republican leadership. They have been active coconspirators here. The trial confirms some of the darkest suspicions about the reporters.

These two weasel-words by Milbank--"thinks" instead of "does" and "of" instead of "about"--are markers of the extent to which the Washington press corps is still, after everything, in the tank for and shading its reporting in favor of the Bush administration.

Milbank goes on, calling things "[newly] confirmed... suspicions" that he has known--and I have known--to be facts since at least mid-2001:

Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.... She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others....

[Martin] proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Comments

[christofay]

Why pay for it? Comedy Central and the reality world blogs are a gust of fresh democratic air.

[RT]

We'll get a better press corps when we figure out a way to create a new model for financing reportage.

I'm waiting for the wikipaper, but it seems to be a ways off yet.

[RT]

Speaking of the WaPo's limited future, there's a story about Glenn Beck on the front page of the WaPo Style section this morning.

A very sympathetic piece.

One that doesn't mention either Spocko, or the sorts of things Glenn Beck said in the clips of Beck that Spocko aired.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012502119.html

[John Emerson]

Below is a link to an amazing, apalling story. The CBS reporter in Iraq has sent out emails begging people to lobby CBS to actually show her reports. A very vivid clip of Iraqi chaos is attached -- the reporters came close to being killed.

The winger-thug noise machine has intimidated CBS (the best of the broadcast corporations, not the worst) so much that they're suppressing good reporting that they paid a lot of money to get. This is like the Third Reich.

We can't let this pass on by. It's hard to appreciate how peculiar and desperate this is. CBS, whose job it is to get the news out, is suppressing its own scoops. People who work for CBS are going outside their so-called profession to find someone who allow the truth to be told.

(Yes, CBS did post the story on their website, but they won't broadcast it. This is the same kind of ass-covering that they always do -- report the truth, but bury the report. Aesopian journalism, as under the Czar.)

I think that Logan must have realized that she was risking her life for a lie, and that her "career" isn't worht it. I dount that she'll be with CBS long, even if she lives.

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/01/24/helping-lara-logan/

[SP]

Can we get a pool going as to how long until some Right Wing Jackass spins Russert's manipulation as "yet another example of That Liberal Media" or some such?

[MaryCh]

So, Russert, Sanger, Pincus and others are employed by the Administration, but do not know it?

[ken melvin]

If 'twere writ, this administration, 'twould be farce.

[Cal]

Shortly into the first term of GWB's administratoin, William Safire wrote in the NYT that the White House had turned the Washington Press corps into their dogs. It didn't take much to train the press to be obedient. Why is this now such a surprise to them?

[rod]

she

[JMG]

Dear Mr. DeLong: You are looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. Tim Russert is not supposed to BE a journalist. He's a lobbyist for the General Electric corporation whose fake news cover gets him more access than GE's real lobbyists.
That's it. That's all any on-air Washington "news" talent is. If the Democrats win back the White House, your head will swim at how fast Paul Begala, James Carville, et. al. replace the current lineup of lackeys.

[slb]

rod wrote: she

Dana Milbank, you mean? Wrong Dana. Dana Milbank (long a) is a he, and appears frequently on MSNBC. (See http://www.nndb.com/people/871/000044739/) You're thinking of Dana Priest (short a), WaPo's national security correspondent. (See http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/aroundthetable/priest.html)

[Gerard MacDonell]

This is a serious not sarcastic question. How important is the mainstream media in shaping public opinion? I know that the media are the presumed source of hard information, facts. But it does not necessarily follow from this, even if true, that the press shape public opinion much. I would guess that the direction of causation runs the other way, from public opinion to news coverage.

The media have to sell their product to a willing audience, and I have noticed that criticism of Bush in the media has followed not led the polls. I would guess some serous work has been done on this, but I don't know what it shows.

My suspicion is that Delong's repeated question about when we get a better press corps is funny but maybe not really to the point. Perhaps he should ask,when oh when will the public force the press to stop selling such dung?

I would guess some readers here are in the markets. You all know the truth of this: news coverage of economic and financial issues is universally taken to be bull, something to bet against. Maybe your experience is not unique? Maybe EVERYBODY knows the media is a joke, a function rather than cause of the public mood.