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January 10, 2006
Liberal Media Elite Bemoans 2005
Marie Cocco of the Washington Post Writers Group recently proclaimed 2005 to be an “annus horribilis” for the American press. While I disagree that last year was worse than 2004 in terms of the media, with Eason Jordan and Rathergate and its reprehensible conduct during the election, it was unquestionably one more in a string of down years in the precipitous decline of the Old Media.
Cocco claims that the “spectacular” journalism scandals of the past, like the multitude of Jayson Blair’s lies pale in comparison to the timidity of the press and the Bush administration’s efforts to intimidate and undermine it. The incidents she cites and those she omits reveal how the Old Media sees itself and but remains blind to its inherent liberal bias.
The writer demonstrates how far to left she is when she whines about the “corporate slashing of newsroom budgets.” A theme that is beginning to emerge from the Hard Left is criticism of a “corporate media” that places profit above truth. It is unhappy that the Old Media isn’t activist enough to advance their liberal political agenda. But in the face of plummeting audiences, even the partisan media had to mitigate its overtly biased reporting.
Of course Cocco takes a gratuitous and now obligatory swipe at me for asking questions at White House press briefings that a majority of voters in the 2004 election wanted to have answered. I was particularly struck by her description of “partisan hucksters” who “masquerade as journalists”. That would apply to a majority of reporters in the Washington press corps.
She shrieks about payments to journalists to promote government programs and pre-packaged “video news releases” as evidence that the President is using taxpayer funds to disseminate propaganda but fails to note that these were also standard practices of the Clinton administration.
Cocco is especially critical of the news stories “planted” in Iraqi papers. I’m not sure her complaint is about the policy or the fact that the articles contradict the Old Media and al Jazeera’s fraudulent reporting on the war in Iraq.
She also laments the cozy relationship between Washington reporters and the people they cover, using the Valerie Plame affair as the example. Was she in a coma during the 1990s? Is it impossible to be a Beltway journalist and not be aware of the incestuous relationship between the media and with the Democratic Party? Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus and his wife Ann (a Clinton appointee) were guests of the Bill and Hillary at Camp David and none of the journalism elites found anything unseemly about that.
Cocco harps about the failings of the New York Times, but fails to criticize the rag that promotes her drivel. 2005 wasn’t a very good year for the Washington Post.
Bob Woodward held important information about his sources in the Plame affair from his editors, just as Judy Miller did. Other reporters have sat on information that undercuts the case against members of the Bush administration in the matter, but haven’t yet stepped forward. Expect this to be revealed when Scooter Libby’s trail begins.
Last January, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman published a story so fraudulent that the White House demanded a retraction and got it. Its affiliate publication, Newsweek ran a phony story about a Koran being flushed down a toilet at the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay that resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people.
The paper’s other reporters ran afoul of any number of legal and ethical standards in 2005. President Bush recently chastised White House correspondent Peter Baker at a press conference for the biased premise of his question about NSA surveillance programs. Dana Priest is being investigated for the story she wrote about alleged “black sites” operated in foreign countries by the CIA, information that is highly classified. Matthew Mosk appears to have had an operational role in the set up of an aide to Republican governor Bob Ehrlich and perhaps violated the law in the process. The Washington Post continues to stonewall on the matter.
The newspaper’s ombudsman suggested that the column of a liberal writer who does a daily roundup of what other liberal journalists are saying about the White House be clearly distinguished as opinion since readers were confusing it with the nonsense it puts on the front page as objective reporting.
If Cocco thinks that 2005 was a bad year for the media, she isn’t going to like 2006. Reporters will be spending a lot more time in court explaining what they knew about Valerie Plame and when they knew it as well as being required to name the sources of classified information about key programs in the war on terror. Several may be in jeopardy of prosecution for revealing these secrets – and deservedly so. Minimally, their sources that likely include CIA officials, federal judges and Congressional Democrats will probably be exposed.
I think 2006 is going to be a great year!
Posted by jeffgannon at January 10, 2006 01:27 PM
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