NYT Media: Amid Tight Secrecy, a Tip: Bush is Going to Baghdad

[kskiska]

On Wednesday afternoon, Mike Allen, a White House correspondent for The Washington Post, was talking on his cellphone outside a school in Crawford, Tex., not far from President Bush's ranch, when an aide to the president motioned him toward the passenger seat of a rented Dodge pickup truck.

In a scene out of a Tom Clancy novel, Mr. Allen was then driven several blocks to what he later described as "a concealed parking lot" and told only that "someone wanted to talk" to him.

That person was Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's communications director, who came bearing a message: "The president's going to Baghdad."

(snip)

But several of the editors, news directors and producers responsible for directing coverage of the Bush administration said that they found aspects of the White House strategy to be deceptive, excessively secretive and disruptive of the relationship between writer and editor.

One editor objected , for example, to a briefing that Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, gave to reporters in Crawford early Wednesday afternoon.

"The president will be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch here in Crawford." Ms. Buchan said. "If there are updates, additionally, to what he does on Thanksgiving, we'll try and keep you posted."

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/28/international/middleeast/28MEDI.html?ex=1070600400&en=5fa95b4972e5ca31&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

[J B]

1. Is it worse than the Granada thing?

The distraction from the Marine bombing.

[kskiska]

3. Here's what the press was told about Grenada:

Past official deceptions have tended to involve military matters. In 1983, then-White House spokesman Larry Speakes told a reporter a day before the United States invaded Grenada that the idea was "preposterous."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17508-2003Nov27.html

[qanda]

2. Hmmm...

In his report to the press corps, Mr. Allen described sitting on Air Force One across from Richard Keil of Bloomberg News. At one point, Mr. Allen wrote, Mr. Keil "leaned across the aisle, shoved aside his I-Pod headset and grinned as he said, `The president of the United States is AWOL, and we're with him. The ultimate road trip.' "

Now why does this sound familiar???

[TheWebHead]

4. he should have said "AWOL again"...

[Pikku]

5. I've been thinking about this all day....

NPR, this morning, was blaring on about how the Bushes were going to have a traditional thanksgiving with free-range turkey, pecan pie, etc, etc. Lots of drooling detail about who was invited, the ranch, blah. I remember thinking "Who the f*** cares? What are they trying to prove?"

Then I hear about Bush's sneak trip to Iraq. And I think- wow, I was fooled. NPR was fooled, or else it wasn't. In either case, Bush used the media to camouflage his real intentions. Only, in this case, we were allowed to see what really happened, after the fact.

I learned a lesson that the Bush administration probably didn't want to teach: namely, that the administration can lie very effectively via the "liberal" media.

Instead of admiring Bush's chutzpah at evading the "foreign insurgents" in Iraq, tonight I'm pondering how a pile of detailed, manufactured crap could be broadcast as news, even by a source viewed as perhaps the most critical of major news sources.

And, from now on, whenever I hear any news of any kind, I'll mutter "Bush thanksgiving," and remember the free range turkey and pecan pie that never were.

Liberal media, my @$$.

[qanda]

6. GREAT points...

I couldn't have said them better myself.

[soothsayer]

7. I'm sure no one was more surprised about this trip than *

You KNOW that this was a rovian last ditch tactic to save dumbya from certain embarrassment when Hillary and that other senator met visited our troops on Thanksgiving and whistleass watched football and drank near beer.

The good news is, Hillary totally made the wh jump through hoops! The bad news is, you hardly hear about her trip now.

Still, boy she had them scrambling!

Poor dumbya, he had to sit in actual 2 hour traffic just like the rest of us (when they snuck him out of his dirt farm in a car)---first time in 3 years he's had to suffer traffic woes. Poor bastard.