The Bush Years And What A "Lapdog" Press Really Looked Like

[Willinois]

I really like that the Bush's selling of the Iraq war is being revisited lately. I'm not sure why that is, other than the MSNBC documentary. I haven't watched that yet, but I wonder how much self-examination there is.

This piece from Media Matters is a good reminder of what a colossal failure the press coverage of Bush was leading up to the Iraq War. Part of it reminds us that MSNBC is not free from blame.

Quote:According to figures from media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003, all but 34 -- eight percent of the total -- could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department. Only 34 stories, or 8 percent or the reports, were of independent origin.

Meanwhile, given its current primetime lineup, sometimes it's hard to recall that in 2003 MSNBC was so nervous about employing a liberal host who opposed Bush's ordered invasion that it fired Phil Donahue preemptively, just weeks before war began. An internal memo warned that Donahue presented "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war." (He was MSNBC's highest rated host at the time of his firing.)

Months worth of chronic timidity and newsroom bowing-down to the White House's war culture clearly helped pave the way to war.

Laying out the reasons for an unprecedented invasion during his final, pre-war invasion press conference on March 6, 2003, Bush mentioned al-Qaida and the terrorist attacks of September 11 thirteen times in less than an hour. Not a single journalist that night challenged the presumed connection Bush was making between al-Qaida and Iraq, despite the fact that intelligence sources had publicly questioned any such association.

I remember Wolf Blitzer defending CNN's coverage. That's what still angers me about the press. That there are people in news who defend their behavior and are still reporting. If they don't see what went wrong leading up to Iraq then they shouldn't be in the news business.

[suzie]

(02-22-2013 04:43 PM)Willinois Wrote:  That there are people in news who defend their behavior and are still reporting. If they don't see what went wrong leading up to Iraq then they shouldn't be in the news business.

Quote for Truth.