- "White House correspondents have been reduced to
stenographers taking dictation from the press office; their real gripe
is that there is not enough dictation. Pathetic, but true. . . . The press
still thinks that buttering up the White House -- particularly in coverage
of Iraq and Afghanistan policy -- will get them more favored treatment.
Wrong! All the White House press corps is getting from the people they
cover is amused and deserved contempt."
-
-
- WASHINGTON -- The relationship
between presidents and the press has never been simple. Presidents quite
naturally, in one way or another, want sympathy and control over what is
written and said about their administrations and policies.
-
- President Eisenhower cheerfully and deliberately confused
reporters. President Kennedy charmed them into seeing things his way. President
Nixon tried to destroy them. President Reagan, even more cheerful than
Eisenhower, waved them off or pretended not to know what they were asking
him. President Carter tried to argue with them, and President Clinton dazzled
them with footwork and complicated dialogues with himself. None of them,
with the possible exception of Kennedy, actually liked correspondents,
but even he told his men to remember that in the end politicians and the
press always go their separate ways.
-
- Right now they are both doing just that: The White House
is going up and the press is going down.
-
- But -- and this is new -- whatever they thought of the
ladies and gentlemen of the press, past presidents all accepted a press
role in the democracy. Questions, analysis and commentary -- annoying,
of course -- were viewed as informing the public, obviously a legitimate
part of democratic governance. The press had an essential role -- checks
and balances, yelling that the emperors had no clothes and all that.
-
- Not now. Not under George W. Bush's administration. And
I am not just talking about ignoring phone calls from reporters or classifying
every piece of paper they get their hands on. In a remarkable article in
the current issue of The New Yorker, Ken Auletta, the resident don of the
magazine's "Annals of Communication," has persuaded President
Bush and his media men to articulate the straight skinny: They simply and
sincerely, I think, state that they do not accept the "historic role
of the press" as surrogate and watchdog of the people. As far as they
are concerned, Auletta concludes, the press is simply another "special
interest" trying to get something for nothing from government -- salable
information in this case.
-
- "You're making a huge assumption -- that you represent
what the public thinks," the president told a reporter who asked him
last summer about reports that he did not read newspapers. In case we did
not understand what that meant, Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff,
told Auletta: "They (the press) don't represent the public any more
than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public
stand for election. ... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."
-
- Karl Rove, the president's political director, spelled
out the "special interest" perception, saying: "He (Bush)
has a cagey respect for them -- the press. ... He understands that their
job is to do a job. And that's not necessarily to report the news. It's
to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay more attention
to their magazine, newspaper or television more."
-
- Some have described the president's relative isolation
-- he has held 11 solo press conferences to date, compared with his father's
73 at the same point back in 1992 -- by calling it "Bush's problem
with the press." That phrase is backward; it is the press that has
a Bush problem. White House correspondents have been reduced to stenographers
taking dictation from the press office; their real gripe is that there
is not enough dictation. Pathetic, but true.
-
- Many correspondents have dealt with that situation by
taking it easy on the men in power now, trying to win them over by showing
how nice they can be in print or on the air. They don't get it. The White
House is way ahead of them. Bush has figured out that buttering up the
press does not guarantee good coverage; quite the opposite.
-
- The press still thinks that buttering up the White House
-- particularly in coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan policy -- will get
them more favored treatment. Wrong! All the White House press corps is
getting from the people they cover is amused and deserved contempt.
-
-
- Reprinted from Yahoo
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=742&e=10&u=/
uclicktext/20040117cm_ucrr/thedeclineandfallofthewhitehousepresscorps
-
-
- Comment
From Jack
1-18-4
-
- Jeff,
-
- I read "The Decline And Fall Of The White House
Press Corps" . Perhaps the title of the article should have been,
"The Rise and Fall of the Fourth Estate."
-
- There is no longer a Fourth Estate. No longer do the
American masses hear the truth about their world, and it has been my experience
they are happy not to hear the truth. As the Firesign Theater once said
in a comedy routine on the album "Don't Squash that Dwarf, hand me
the Pliers", "Show the people a light and they will follow it
anywhere."
-
- So, the people have found a light, regardless of how
dim it is, and are following it. It is the light of single issue politics,
and intolerance. The Neocons have shown the people this light, and it
is a red flashing light. On one side the light flashes, "We are a
united people.", on the other side the light flashes, "But only
if the other guy agrees with us, otherwise get the other guy before he
gets you. He is your enemy, not us."
-
- The remnants of the Fourth Estate are the advertising
agencies of this message. So, in a sense, Bush is right about his assessment
of the White House press corps and the news media in general. But, how
can he be wrong about this assessment when he is part of the machine that
made the Fourth Estate in the image and likeness of the Neocons?
-
- Jeff, what if the President gave a news conference and
nobody came? Do you think he would reconsider his opinion about journalists,
or would he have them all arrested for refusing his invitation? Nevertheless,
if such a thing would happen, my faith would be restored in the Fourth
Estate. How about yours?
-
- "I saw, I came, I carried on! Oh those were the
days..." -- JLK Greystone
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