The fact is, I’m only doing what the American public wants me to do, which I know because I’m so in tune with the Common American. I’m such an awesome journalist!

Oh, goody.

Another “tell-all” book by a misremembering sycophant getting wise to the fact that people are digging out pitchforks from their garden sheds.

If only Bush had refused to wear a flag pin, then they might have asked him some tougher questions.

Probably not. Remember that picture of Bush signing his name on an admirer’s flag? That’s a pretty awful offense w/r/t flag code, but no one gave a shit.

The question is, what additional types of imaginable evidence would be required by the corporate news producers before they recognize, “Wow, we really let the hawks get away with anything”?

We’ve got all the empirical evidence ever needed to show the actual character of their news products — what they did, what they didn’t do, and what was done by other news producers (blogs, foreign newspapers, etc.) which they easily could have done.

And they respond by either ignoring the evidence or explaining that you outsiders just don’t know ‘how things work in the news bidness’.

Then we’ve got insider accounts from the very administration they’re fluffing, saying “Yoo fayled on yur jobz and kisd owr butts”.

What next? Do we need slow motion video capture recreated in 3D of Preznit Bush saying something preposterously untrue and then a CSI-style journey through the reporting & editing process revealing the exact moment of assitude?

I’d watch that show.

What next? Do we need slow motion video capture recreated in 3D of Preznit Bush saying something preposterously untrue and then a CSI-style journey through the reporting & editing process revealing the exact moment of assitude?

da da da da DUUMMMMMMMM
da DUUMMMMMMMMMM
da da da da DUUMMMMMMMM
da DUUMMMMMMMMMM
da da da da DUUMMMMMMMM
da DUUMMMMMMMMMM
whoooooooooooooo are youuuuuuuuuu
who who, who who

I”m all for it if they use the same rendering program they used for the, “Money for Nothing” video, El Cid.

Please, the media is/was far too busy fighting over themselves for optimal blow job position too every pretend to be objective. Bush could have come to every press conference wearing nothing but two gallons of blood, holding the head of a child in one hand, a half dozen gutted snakes in the other, and a crazed look on his face, and the headlines would have read, “More Bad News for Dem Hopefuls”.

I think the only think McCain could do that would start to get him seriously bad press coverage would be to stab Chris Mathews in the neck with a pen knife. Maybe. But only if it was on camera.

I’ll get this line producer to trace, you keep working on reconstructing the angle of the narrative.

There’s GOLD in dem dar hills! At the very least, we’ll be recognized in the future with an NFL team.

Shoot, wrong thread again!

Oh yeah? We’re YOU’RE too depressing to contemplate, you un-American elite elitist doodoohead cootie queen! BOO-yah! Dean Broder wins again!

If only that damn liberal media had asked us the tough questions when we were intentionally misleading the public into supporting an unnecessary war, instead of permitting us to get away with it, thereby making us look bad!! The fact that the pernicious media did not call us out when we were lying to you, PROVES that they wanted us to later fall out of favor with the public. So you see, it’s not our fault.

p.s. Buy my book.

In my continuing effort to be OT: Boston Sadlys! I need your email addys. E-mail me at my screenname at mit.edu.

Thanks!

Steal This Book.

Aren’t these people ashamed of themselves for what they admit they did? Not enough to try to rectify any of it, only enough to try to sell books and try to cash in. Well it’s too late Scotty, we’ve already read this a dozen times.

Oooh, she’s a rejector. I must protect myself.

Notice that Bush has NEVER been caught bowling, as that would lead to unpleasant examination of his legislative records.

And I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
It’s time to bring this ship into the shore
And throw away the oars, forever

Cause I can’t fight this feeling anymore
I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for
And if I have to crawl upon the floor
Come crashing through your door
Baby, I can’t fight this feeling anymore

More bullshit from the bloated former prince of lies. Who wants to bet the book actually says nothing? A few tepid teasers to hike up sales.

The question is, what additional types of imaginable evidence would be required by the corporate news producers before they recognize, “Wow, we really let the hawks get away with anything”?

Sigh… yeah, that’s the thing that makes me think it’s by design rather than through stupidity. I know the bit about not attributing to malice what can be explained by teh st00pid, but the defense-contractor-owned news services’ behavior stretches that principle beyond breaking.

I’ll be interested in seeing how Colorado’s own princess of lies, Dana Perino, is going to spin this. She’ll probably twist herself right into the ground.

Cnn reports that Miss Dana calls McClellen “disgruntled” and that she’s sad and confused, after everyone was so nice to him.

Where have we seen this type of thing before?
I’m guessing picked up by some WashPost columnist like Eugene Robinson or Dana Milbank, then ignored until Lil’ Scotties’ book sales tank (some more) followed by a very public “those remarks were taken out of context”.

I know the bit about not attributing to malice what can be explained by teh st00pid

If the biased output weren’t systematic, if teh st00pid or the random error led one day to massive leftist or liberal leanings and another day to right wing or hawkish or pro big biz leanings, that would be an argument.

But since it doesn’t, and their ‘mistakes’ lean one way and one way only, some other set of social processes are at work.

But do not give in to the news producers’ seductive temptation: don’t be lured into intricate discussions of ‘how they do stuff’ instead of rationally analyzing what they actually do. If it were up to them, and it usually is, they prefer you ignore any problems with their actual output and instead talk all day about how their newsroom is run, and who got them into journalism, and what traditions they follow, and don’t look over there no no no just listen to me keep talking about the details of my work processes don’t look don’t look don’t look!

Susan–

She’s definately sad and confused–that’s nothing new! She wouldn’t be a wingnut otherwise.

“I’ll be interested in seeing how Colorado’s own princess of lies, Dana Perino, is going to spin this.”

According to NPR, she basically said, “He’s obviously disgruntled. It’s sad, really.” Then she pulled a long face and looked down at the podium for a moment, as if mourning the loss of a close friend.

She then looked up, her face brightening, and asked the assembled press corps “OK! What’s next?” No further discussion of the topic was heard.

Okay, the last part was my imagining of the briefing but who wants to bet me it was any different?

Susan beat me to it. She might actually have seen footage of Spinderella at work. Disregard my meanderings.

I look forward to the day that Dana Perino becomes disgruntled.

(If Dana shows up to tell me to bring it on, I’m retiring from posting comments forever).

Scottie paraphrase: “If only the press had the balls to let us accuse them of treason and sic the FBI on them, we would have gladly answered their questions.”

No, just a report, but I look forward to reading the transcript.

Perino’s a piece of work. She’s condescending and arrogant. And as always with conservatives, not nearly as bright as she thinks.

Apparently, poor old Scotty has been replaced by a pod…

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad — this is not the Scott we knew.”

More from Perino: “The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it — he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers.”

Yeah, like ensuring his legacy as teh worst preznident ever. And attacking Iran, of course.

Perino’s a piece of work. She’s condescending and arrogant.
Compared to Tony Snow, Dana Perino has the humility of a Tibetan monk, and compared to Little Scottie, she’s quite open and informative. Interestingly, she garners about a tenth the sympathy from the press corps.
Not to say that she isn’t a horrible person with no morals or soul, but she has been dealt a pretty crappy hand.

The Asia Times has been saying that the attack is getting nearer.

You’re not saying this, but I don’t think it’s a woman thing. Tony Snow was one of them, one of the jounalists, and McClellen benefitted from the post-9/11 breakdown of the press. Perino comes along at the wrong time, but still has a mostly ineffective press.

Here’s a spirited defense of “The Liberal Media” from the incredibly obtuse Ann Kornblut in a Q&A at WaPo today:

Q: Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: “it’s live, it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you’re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”.

A: Anne E. Kornblut: That’s a good point. (I’m a huge Bumiller fan). To that I would add that most reporters, or at least this reporter, looked continuously for cracks in the facade internally, and the assistance of an aide such as McClellan in helping us understand the flaws is essential. I would urge all future White House aides to remember that sometimes the press can be a friend when things inside start going wrong.

Hey SamFromUtah, thanks for the groovy moniker, you are swinging hepcat.
Don’t you know they will blame it all on Helen Thomas. By vindictively moving that old lady to the last row, they sent a signal that agressive questioning would be punished. But wait! It wasn’t the signal they intended! The correct signifier was that follow-up questions would be appreciated, because the signified (ms thomas) was following up everyone else in the room. Ahhhh, we get it now. And Dana Perino is the sharpest semiotician of them all. No one ever asks her again about a question she fails to answer. True communicative genius.

The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it

Let me get this straight: there is this book from a former White House press secretary that shows how the news media has given the president a free pass, while Bush has surrounded himself with a bubble of sycophants and spin so thick that he doesn’t know where he is anymore.

White House response:
1) Imply that the press is biased against the White House and may or may not have even reported on the book accurately.
2) Nonetheless defer to their deep journalistic acumen.
3) Assure the public that Bush is still being told what to think by the very competent minds that brought you Iraq and Katrina.
4) Announce that the president just got a Wii installed in his bubble and won’t be coming out for some time.
3)

You’re not saying this, but I don’t think it’s a woman thing.
Well sure, I’d have switched to Iris if I was going to scream misogyny again.
I don’t think the press is hard enough on Perino. She still gets away with all sorts of nonsense. I’m just pointing out that the Press – Secretary relationship, although still terminally ill, is less grotesquely backslapping than it has been in years.

Indeed, the very reason Perino is in the job now is because the Bushies hope that reporters will go easier on a woman. And that’s important when everyone has woken up to the fact that her job is defending the indefensible.

Bush is on teevee telling everyone how our great weapons can attack and spare civilians, “Strike regimes directly.” They’ll be less likely to challenge us later. Our military is fine, transformed, “faster and more agile and more lethal.” We must be patient in “battle of wills. “The only way Americans can lose the War on Terror is if we defeat ourselves.”

If I were an Air Force Cadet I’d be terrified. He all but told them they have volunteered to risk their lives in a World War.

Nah. The air force is where you go if you want to do military service and not get deployed to a war zone. Only the pilots and aircrew, a TINY fraction of the air force personnel, actually can get killed in combat.

And with their new emphases on cyber warfare and unmanned aircraft, there’s even less opportunity for the airdales to actually RISK their lives.

Sure, a few months ago there was some muttering in the armed services community about drawing personnel from the air force and the navy and re-deploying them on the ground in iraq because the army and marines were getting disproportionately chewed up in the war on terrah.

But you notice that kinda faded right off the radar screen. Wonder what the desertion rate woulda looked like?

Oh, and I should mention that air and navy FACs are some of the crazy-bravest wackjobs you can find in combat…

mikey

I know you’re right. I think indirectly he was talking to a different kind of audience, and the speech was meant to be understood only in retrospect. That’s what’s so creepy to me.

Susan:

There’s a writer covering Mideast affairs named Muhammed Cohen? Best byline ever!

El Cid,
You nailed it, inre: the problems with the mainstream media’s systematic flaws and the great lenghths they go to pretend they don’t exist. The only thing that makes me think you’re coming at it from an outsider’s perspective – that is, you’ve not worked for a news organization yourself – is you didn’t note the all-pervasive power of the advertising department when it comes to what gets printed/broadcast and, more importantly, what gets put aside. As it is, you’ve summed up one of the main reasons you couldn’t get me back into the newspaper bidness with a gun.

That and people who give you shit for something an entirely different department did. Man, that drives me up the wall. Ya know, it amazed me people apparently sports reporters actually acknowledged the rest of the paper, much less cared what we thought.

Matt T: I agree that there are organizational, institutional, and ownership based factors which lead to why and how the systematic news coverage bias arises.

And in sum of my historical view, most of it is how the advertising-based revenue system eliminated the early 20th century rivals to the newspapers of the bosses — the newspapers of the unions, socialist parties, ethnic groups, and others, all of which used to outsell the bosses’ papers, but then all that was left in most areas were the bosses’ papers, the bosses’ radio station, the bosses’ TV stations.

Yes, you’ve had your alternative and activist opposition media, now mostly gathered in the blogosphere, but still, it ain’t no CNN or New York Times in terms of resources — though it could rival the bosses’ media in readership etc.

But those are in-depth and case studies, and when people try to explain such things off-the-cuff these hypotheticals are largely used as distractions to criticize the accurate reviews of the coverage itself.

You don’t need to know the in-depths of “why” before studying and presenting the “what” of how coverage turns out. It’s like how engineers are regularly given “black box” puzzles to test them in which they know what signals are input into a mystery box, and what signals are output, and they have to come out with the most logical and coherent design of what’s inside the black box.

You can’t get to the point of studying the “black box” function if you’re first knee-capped from studying what the inputs & outputs are.