Bushies try a new frame:
On this
Philadelphia Inquirer great article we find out a new excuse for bribing the media: Bush is being
ambitious - visionary..
Are those the new neocon words for unethical and amoral ?
Tim Pinkerton, who worked in the administration of George H.W. Bush, says: "It's quite clear
this White House is exploring radical alternative ways to getting its message out - through the aggressive hiring of flacks like Williams, and the presence, or even planting, of friendly so-called journalists like Gannon.
"The Bush people are challenging all the old assumptions about how to work the press. They are ambitious - visionary, if you will - in ways that Washington has yet to fathom .. as the President said in 2003, "somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter."
"Working the press" as Bush is doing is wrong Pinkerton. To quote your idol:
"Democracies have certain things in common. They have a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition." --GWB, Bratislava, Slovakia, February 24, 2005
in ways that Washington has yet to fathom.. ?
Wrong Pinkerton! Washington knows what Bush is doing, and it is nothing new. Stalin was doing it 50 years ago. But at that time we didn't call it "visionary" or "radical", we called it unethical and bad for democracy.
The US media filter
A favorite staple of reich wing doublespeak, Bushies accuse the left of doing what the GOP is doing by using the "Accusations in a mirror" technique that worked so well in Rwanda (1)
Update [2005-3-1 18:31:43 by lawnorder]: Here's proof the new attitude on regards to GannonGate is a concentrated attack on the SCLM
Ari Fleischer's new book, "Taking Heat,"
.. is out today, and while his style isn't to smack people around, he is the first Bush administration insider to offer a sustained indictment of the media. White House correspondents, he says, are mostly liberal. Mostly negative. Mostly opposed to tax cuts. Mostly unwilling to give his president a break. Mostly interested in whipping up conflict.
Planting questions: Now they like it... Now they don't
Feb 23 2005:Planting questions is WRONG: (when done to Bush)
Bushie: They obviously planted the question
... When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin's language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. 'They obviously planted the question,' said one of Bush's senior aides.. 'Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather,' says a senior Administration official. 'It was like something out of 1984.'
Early February 2005: Planting questions is GOOD: (when Bushies do it)
Gannon: soup lines... divorced from reality"
Dec 2004: Planting questions is WRONG: (when done to Rummie) No one should buy that the Pitts gambit was not a setup, a sleight of microphone, because the soldier embraced the question, or because the grunts applauded. Let's grant it as obvious the troops are interested in questions and answers about their safety. But take the Pitts stunt and put it somewhere else.
Imagine the October presidential debate in St. Louis where the citizen questioners pressed the candidates. Imagine if the moderator stealthily had encouraged a citizen to ask a real brushback question to John Kerry, and then it came out later, after a dramatic exchange topped the news, that the moderator was responsible. The question and answer might be important, but the news story would be denounced as manipulated media fakery.
By all means, let's unite as Americans behind better equipment for our troops. But let's also agree we need much more honesty from some media outlets covering them (2)
Fake memos BAAAAAD... Fake reporter, fake article, Fake name, fake newspaper, fake question GOOD
Dan Rather's "sin": was it worse than faking EVERYTHING in a news piece ? Even the reporter ?
On other Gannon news..
E&P gives Kos and bloggers an attaboy!
Details at Daily Kos :: Congrats to dkos Community " The Pajamadeen"
Show me the funny
Daily Show to spoof Gannon/Guckert on Thursday
A "correspondent" from the fake news show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, was outside City Hall... wearing a badly groomed hair piece, a fake mustache and an ugly 1970s tie... [He asks]: 'How do you feel about the president's awesome plan to privatize Social Security?
Anti-gay anti-AARP ad scandal getting coverage
by John at AMERICAblog
I'm happy to say the media is starting to cover the fact that USA Next appears to have stolen the photo of the gay couple for their anti-AARP ad... Wonkette covered it, and Congress Daily has a mention of it as well.
For those who missed, John is now helping the couple who'se photo was illegally used by USA Next and helped them get a BIG lawyer. -- law
White House Correspondents' Association wimps out on GannonGuckertGate
by John at AMERICAblog