Not that she doesn't have a point... on MSNBC this morning last night, referring to the footage of Obama hitting a basket in front of the troops, and the other trip photos, Andrea Mitchell said something like
Let me just say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference while he was on the ground either in Afghanistan or Iraq. What you're seeing is not reporters brought in, you're seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military and what some would call fake interviews because they're not interviews from a journalist.
Interesting point. Andrea's right when she says the military ought not to be in the business of journalism, and we should be skeptical of what we are seeing.
I'm sure this emphasis on skepticism is exactly what she said when reporters were embedded during the war. And when the statue of Saddam came down (the wide shot showing hardly anyone there, but the close-up making it seem like a spontaneous crowd had gathered.)
And this is what she said when McCain walked around the Iraqi market in a flak jacket without the shots of his guard, repeating the point day and night (like now) so that everyone understood it.
I'm almost certain that Andrea warned us to be skeptical when George Bush maneuvered the aircraft carrier for a better backdrop for his Mission Accomplished stunt.
Andrea must have done an in-depth special report on the NY Times story about propaganda, where she did an exclusive expose on Col. Ken Allard and Gen. Mountgomery Meigs, MSNBC analysts implicated in the propaganda scandal. I just can't seem to locate the transcript, but I'm sure she did.
She must have spoken up in a very public way when Phil Donahue's MSNBC show was cancelled for being critical of the war effort.
And this is what she said about the fake turkey, the staged Bush visits, and the Photoshopped cloning of the crowd at a speech at a military base, and...
Oh, wait... it's a different standard now. It's Obama. But what do we know? We're just bloggers.