Tonight's piece by Howard Kurtz starts out with the following bluster of unproven, unlikely absurdity:
President Bush suggested to his staff that he appear on "Meet the Press" on Sunday as a way of answering questions about Iraq after a barrage of Democratic criticism against him, a White House official said yesterday.
How interesting. Have you ever noticed that Bush is always taking all of these great initiatives that his brilliant political staff like Karl Rove never think of. You see, it was the sailor's decision to put up the "Mission Accomplished" sign and it was Bush's decision to do Meet the Press.
What bothers me, isn't that the administration makes these claims - but that the press reports them as fact. A true journalist would at least write, "The White House tells us that it was Bush's idea to show up on Meet the Press this Sunday. Of course, the White House always implies that political initiatives were Bush's ideas even as documents released on behalf of Treasury Secretary O'Neill might suggest otherwise." So we proceed:
Bush's decision to submit to an hour-long interrogation by NBC's Tim Russert comes as Democrats John F. Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards and Wesley K. Clark have been denouncing him not just on Sunday morning shows but on programs ranging from "Hardball" and "Larry King Live" to David Letterman's "Late Show" and Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show," where Edwards announced his candidacy.
Why of course, it was "Bush's decision to submit to an hour-long interrogation..." Bull. How do we know that this is pure bull spin? Well, the fourth paragraph tells us who really claims this was Bush's idea.
Communications Director Dan Bartlett said that Bush, who plans to appoint a commission to examine intelligence failures on Iraq, "felt it was important that the American people hear his thinking on this issue and pursuing the war on terrorism." On Tuesday, Bush suggested "Meet the Press" because of the "lengthy format" and because "Tim Russert has an enormous amount of respect," Bartlett said.
Here is my problem with this. Reporters continue to report claims made by administration spokes peoples as fact without requiring verification. To make the statements in the first two paragraphs outside of quotes, without attribution is to substitute claims made by propaganda artists for the White House for truth. This is irresponible journalism - period.
This may seem a bit on the trivial side, but this is exactly the type of biased journalism (where positive attributions about Bush are attributed as fact while similar statements about others, including but not limited to Democrats, are always qualified as claims). And I just felt like venting about it.