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Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Sat May 07, 2005 at 11:17:08 PM EST
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Frank Rich writes today about Laura Bush, MSM, bloggers and the Runaway Bride. He begins,

AS we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Drudge Report and the second anniversary of the Jayson Blair scandal, American journalists are in a race with the runaway bride for public enemy No. 1. Newspaper circulation is on the skids, the big three network anchor thrones are as precarious as King Lear's, bloggers are on the rampage, and the government is embracing fake reporters and threatening to jail real ones. A Pew Research Center poll shows that Americans now trust the press less than every other major institution, from government to medicine to banks. We can only be grateful that the matchups didn't include pornographers or Major League Baseball.

Then - just when you think things couldn't get any worse - along comes the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Rich makes this observation (which is similar to one I made last night .)

Yes, Mrs. Bush was funny, but the mere sight of her "interrupting" her husband in an obviously scripted routine prompted a ballroom full of reporters to leap to their feet and erupt in a roar of sycophancy like partisan hacks at a political convention. The same throng's morning-after rave reviews acknowledged that the entire exercise was at some level P.R. but nonetheless bought into the artifice. We were seeing the real Laura Bush, we kept being told. Maybe. While some acknowledged that her script was written by a speechwriter (the genuinely gifted Landon Parvin), very few noted that the routine's most humanizing populist riff, Mrs. Bush's proclaimed affection for the hit TV show "Desperate Housewives," was fiction; her press secretary told The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller that the first lady had yet to watch it.

His point:

From the White House's faux "town hall meetings" to the hiring of Armstrong Williams to shill for its policies in journalistic forums, this administration has been a master of erecting propagandistic virtual realities that the news media have often been either tardy or ineffectual at unmasking.

Blogs 1, MSM O.

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    • Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 | 4 comments (4 topical)
    Re: Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 (none / 0) (#1)
    by Mreddieb on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:50 PM EST
    I was stunned by the MSM's fawing over barbara Busgbag's Rude and crude diartribe. I wondered how the MSM would have behaved if Hillary Clinton made "jokes" like that. This to me was proof that the MSM has surrendered to the admin. It is no longer the forth estate but an unwitting arm of the Repiglicans Party

    Re: Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 (none / 0) (#2)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:50 PM EST
    Ed B - Well, seeing as how Hillary's jokes would have been about Clinton, I suspect the MSM would have fainted in shock and horror. et al - It is said that you get what you deserve in life, and the current situation of the MSM does make it seem that way. From fake stories on Vietnam and nerve gas by CNN to not reporting about the horrors of Iraq by CNN to made up stories in the NYT to the Rathergate memos on CBS they have proved themselves not reliable and untrustworthy.

    Re: Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:50 PM EST
    Leave it to Seymour Hersh to catch a true story - Abu Ghraib. There are some real journalists still out there. There are also a bunch of pr employees waiting at the press center to pick up the lies about Jessica Lynch or Pat Tillson for their daily pitch. You have to pick and choose who you will bother to give the time of day. Same thing back in the 50's with Izzy Stone in the McCarthy heyday.

    Re: Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 (none / 0) (#4)
    by jackl2400 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:51 PM EST
    Right on, CA...so true!

    Journalists: Public Enemy Number 1 | 4 comments (4 topical)