An excellent piece by
Barry Ritholtz at BOP today highlights how things are changing for the good slowly, slowly, slowly but surely.
Lately, I have noticed several changes in the media's coverage of both the White House and the Iraq War. This shift has accelerated recently, and in some instances, dramatically:
- Today's New York Time's front page shows a soldier's casket being unloaded from a plane (its one of 3 front page photos of grieving family members). There are additional photos (page A13) of all 64 American servicemen killed this past week;
- The Wall Street Journal has been critical of numerous statements of the administration. Several articles directly challenge as false facts put forth by the administration;
- At the President's Tuesday night press conference, the media asked far more difficult, uncomfortable questions than they have in the past. Though not nearly as voracious or "in your face" as the UK press, it was marked change from the kid glove treatment the President has enjoyed in the past.
- Much of the media carried explicit photos of the burned and desecrated bodies of 4 American contractors hanging from a bridge in Fallujah.
What we are seeing -- in real time -- is an unravelling of the administration's media management strategy.
Ritholtz cites Novak/Plame as the turning point, with Clarke's testimony and the Iraq casualties following up as key events. One might throw in the 9/11 hearings to the mix as well. Is he right? I think he is.
For more examples of things you'd never thought you'd see in the mainstream press, see also Ron Fournier (AP) today:
[Minnesota Governor Tim] Pawlenty discussed the political implications of Iraq hours after attending the Tuesday funeral of Corporal Tyler Fey of Eden Prairie, Minn., who was killed April 4 in Iraq's Al Anbar province. Two other soldiers from Minnesota died in Iraq last week.
At Fey's funeral, his brother, Ryan, told hundreds of mourners, "I have so much anger for the politicians in Washington. [Their policies] sent my brother on a second tour of Iraq after I thought he'd done his part in the initial invasion."
Pawlenty, who will attend a second soldier's funeral later this week, urged Bush to keep making the case that much good has been accomplished in Iraq.
"But, at the same time, it's a mess. You've got people there who, based on religious backgrounds, hate each other. They've got all kinds of agendas and sub-agendas, and I think it's confusing to Americans because they don't understand why Iraqis don't like us. They don't get it," the governor said.
"They're starting to ask this question, 'Is this thing really going to work?' "
(...)In Ohio, another battleground state critical for Bush to carry in 2004, as he did in 2000, the mounting violence and casualties in Iraq may be straining support for Bush.
"I voted for Bush in 2000, but I'm having some second thoughts about him now," said 82-year-old Clarence Hammel, a retired jewelry company sales executive from Montgomery, Ohio.
No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio. Bush won the state in 2000 with 50 percent of the vote compared to 46 percent for Al Gore.
"He's got us in a terrible mess in Iraq and doesn't seem to have a good plan for getting us out of it," Hammel said yesterday.
It's a truism to say these things take time, but nothing Bush and Rove planned seems likely to happen going forward... Kerry's neither broke nor K.O'd, and Iraq's not stable. That NYC convention's not looking like such a hot idea, either. So assume Bush will be even more scripted than usual. We'll need a free press to get at the truth. They can't get much worse, so here's hoping they really are getting better.