CBS's Mark Knoller challenges WH press critics "YOU be the reporter!"

[BurtWorm]

For a background on this challenge, see this and this. Here's his specific challenge:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/04/26/publiceye/entry2730924.shtml




YOU be the reporter!

It’s March 6, 2003. Pres Bush is moving closer to ordering an attack on Iraq.

You’re in the East Room for his primetime news conference – and he calls on you.

What do you ask?

What finely-crafted question do you pose that both serves the public interest and will get a meaningul response?

I assure you my colleagues and I will read what you write.

[Beaverhausen]

1. there are some good questions so far

[angstlessk]

2. The key to that is 'meaningful response'..cause no matter the question

the answer was the same...9/11WMDalQuida

[BurtWorm]

6. Yes indeed.

Also, as I recall, the WH was careful to pick it's favorite useful idiots to call on that night.

But that does not excuse the rest of them. It wasn't just that night that they played along in the role the WH scripted for them.

[baldguy]

14. Is the WH Spokesmodel d'jour the only human on the planet who knows what the WH is doing?

[Don Claybrook]

3. Why are you kicking the UN out when Saddam is complying?

That's a start, Mr. Knoller.

Why did I, an average citizen, know with certainty that this was was being ginned-up for no good reason? Like lots of people, I assumed that Saddam was working on some weapons programs (like we do). But I never for a second thought he was a threat to the US. And every politician in this country knew that too, and most did and said nothing about it, to their eternal disgrace.

But I'm straying from the main point, which is that it's very difficult to work up any sympathy for "reporters" who whored themselves out for access and invitations to the right parties, with the direct result being that children were bombed, mothers were disemboweled, and fathers were taken from their families forever. I think this whiny, pampered SOB should shut the hell up while he's ahead.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

4. The 'meaningful response' part is what's holding me up.

This is dumbya we're talking to, after all. :shrug:

I guess I would ask questions that pointed out that the inspectors are in & doing their job & why can't we let them have more time?

[BurtWorm]

8. He deliberately set the bar very high.

He knows no one expects Bush to give a meaningful response to any question he isn't preprogrammed to answer.

[BOSSHOG]

5. "Can't you overcompensate for a teeny tiny cock some other way?"

[blm]

17. aha .... now THAT is a human nature truth that is never allowed to be aired.

Especially if that teenie weenie is a Republican's.

[flyarm]

7. why did colin powell lie at the UN to the entire world ..using a college kids

thesis paper and pass it off as US intelligence?

it was in the british papers that it was all a big fat fucking lie!!

what about the PNAC new world order..start there if you are a damn reporter!!

aug 31st 2002..the head of Methodist church said nothing will stop pissy pants war..he tried..before pissy pants went to congress and before pissy pants went to the UN..why did reporters ignore this mans letter to all methodist leaders?????????

THOSE ARE THE EASY QUESTIONS..

FLY

[WinkyDink]

9. Oooh, he's mighty tetchy, now, ain't he?? Here's my question: Okay, 5:

"When did the U.N. appoint the US to act as its enforcer?"

"Do you know who Hans Blix is, and would you please describe what his job was?"

"What precise provisions have you,as CiC, NOT your generals, made to reduce the amount of civilian casualties, that is to say, dead women and children, given that you are about to bomb the major city of Baghdad?"

"How many of the hijackers were Saudis, and how many were Iraqis?"

"Whom did the gay prostitute posing as a journalist in our midst, Jeff Gannon, aka James Guckert, visit at the WH over 200 times?" (Oh, I realize this was after this time-frame, but wouldn't you like to know? ;))

[baldguy]

10. Weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq.

Ask him why they weren't finding anything? Why wasn't the administration cooperating with them?

To be fair, those questions were asked. But the WH Press Corps just transcribed the propaganda the WH was putting out for them, instead of INVESTIGATING and REPORTING.

[KharmaTrain]

11. What A Cop Out!!!

A nice trick...try to divert attention away from those who want to know why he acted like a laptop



I could care less what people would ask 4 years after the fact, I want to know why he didn't stand up and ask a tough question that night. Was he aware of how he was being used to sell a war for profit and was he a willing participant? Did he dare to balance what he heard that night by checking the facts like Knight-Ridder did?

What a cheap stunt!

[katsy]

12. It's too late by March 6 2003.

Why weren't the press corps doing their jobs BEFORE THAT?

Why was it possible for bloggers and ordinary Americans to put 1 + 1 = 2 before the attack on Iraq... something the exalted press corps couldn't do?

Trash this challenge. What was the press corps doing for two years leading up to the war? Playing dominoes? Getting pedicures? What? It certainly wasn't doing much investigating.

There was evidence that the attack on Iraq was planned before 911 - so do the press corps miss that memo?

This challenge is nonsense. A question on the day that Iraq was attacked would, of course, be useless. Investigating this mis-administration's faked evidence prior to March 6 is where the press corpps failed.

[maxrandb]

13. Mr President, don't you think we should concentrate our efforts in

Afghanistan against the people that actually attacked us? I mean, if you're going to commit 160,000 troops somewhere, why not in Afghanistan?

Mr President: Can you provide any shred of credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had any connection with the attacks of 9/11? The American people know that he is a bad man, but there are a lot of bad men in this world. Why Iraq? Why Now? What is the goal?

Mr President: What is your plan after the fall of Baghdad? Saddam's army has been crippled by the was with Iran, the first gulf war, and economic sanctions. The army of Ethiopia could probably over-run Baghdad in a few days, but have you given any thought to the historical religious and ethnic conflicts that have affected Iraq for over 1000 years? Ask the Brittish how their occupation of Iraq went.

Mr President: If the American people and Congress support you, and we later find out that you lied about WMD, Iraq connections to Al Quaida, the cost of the war, who's going to pay for it, how our troops are going to be treated, or the stated purpose of this war (to disarm Saddam of WMD), do we have your word that you will resign?

Mr President: You keep saying this country is at war, but never in our history have we ever went to war and had massive tax-cuts at the same time. Wouldn't it be prudent to repeal those tax-cuts and put that money into rebuilding our military and veterans health care system?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gee. That's what I came up with in a matter of seconds.

So Mark Knoller is basically saying "reportinatin is Hard WERK!"

Fuck you! you lazy worthless, primma-donna "presstitutes"

[Marr]

15. The question is irrelevant. His job was to research the government's claims

and report objectively on their veracity. No wonder these people failed so miserably. They don't even know what a journalist is.

[OHdem10]

16. The question the Press/Media ask are fine--

it is the preparation and presentation that we question.

Instead of just accepting the WH Line and parroting it.
what about going to other opinions and make a wider
opinioned report. Include some of the opposition
opinion.

Yes there a few stories which require focus of WH.
At some point there should be research and analysis
of this report.

[gratuitous]

18. Since the whole thing was scripted, this is nonsense

Every question, every questioner, was pre-selected. Bush himself commented that the whole dumbshow was scripted. What's Knoller's point? "Sure we fucked up, and nobody had the stones to do anything about it, but I'll bet you couldn't have done any better!" Wahh, wahh, wahh. Go cash your six-figure paycheck, Mr. Knoller. It would be more fitting if it was in twenties left on top of the dresser in a cheap motel room, if you catch my meaning.

What it might have taken would have been for the reporters in the room to agree to park their massive egos at the door, and refuse to ask scripted questions, and refuse to accept non-responsive answers. And that wouldn't happen in a million, billion years, and everybody in the room that day knew it.

You need absolution, Mr. Knoller? Go to confession. You're not going to get it from the country whose children have been murdered thanks in part to your professional negligence.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

19. Jeebus. If you're a stenographer you write down what

Bush answers and that's your story.
If you're a JOURNALIST you CHECK IT OUT.

[Ganja Ninja]

20. I'd have to register and I don't want to be bothered with that.

So here's a question someone should have asked. Mr President, War is serious business and if you're going to go to war you should have justification without doubt. That being said, if the WMD's you claim are in Iraq are not found will you have the decency to resign or will you continue to disgrace this country by remaining in office and pretending you have not dishonored yourself and the country?

[niyad]

21. here are a few:

"why are you not allowing the UN inspectors to do their job?"

"why is it that none of the other countries, including his neighbors, perceives him as a threat?"

"why is it that he hasn't been perceived as a threat by this country for the last ten years, until you said so? HOW in the HELL can a country whose military budget is 1 1/2 DAYS of the pentagon budget be a threat? And, if that country IS a threat, WHAT are you going to do about the useless hacks in the pentagon who allowed this situation to occur? And, how soon are Barbara, Jenna, Pierce, and your other of-age relatives going to be sent over?"

[niyad]

22. having seen moyer's special the other night, every single one of those people needs to apoligize to

the people for failing to do their jobs (as much as I despise knight-ridder, apparently theirs were amoung the very few actually DOING their jobs)

[warren pease]

23. OK, I'll be the reporter

And you, Mark, are no longer assigned to the White House. If you want to continue working for CBS, you'll do so as a stringer, paid on a per-story basis. For your first assignment, you'll be covering the next Iditerod dog sled race, and then moving farther north to file weekly reports on the melting Arctic ice cap. Pick up your severance check on your way out, you useless, cowardly tool, corporate suck-up, stenographer, cheerleader and propagandist for the BushCo agenda.

You took the top reporting job in the country and turned it into a nondescript desk deep in the bowels of BushCo's ministry of disinformation. Instead of honoring and maintaining the trust between the press and the public that has acted for centuries as the citizenry's most critical restraint against the power of kings, prime ministers, presidents and petty tyrants, you dishonored yourself, your profession and entire history of participatory democracy by reporting lies as truth, giving obvious disinformation the gloss of legitimacy by invoking CBS News' former tradition of journalistic excellence, and by acting as an advocate for the monstrous hoax that has thus far resulted in more than 3,300 US military deaths, as well as the deaths of an estimated 650,000 Iraqi civilians. You told us it was the war on terror when it was just another imperialist resource grab.

You did this, along with your colleagues in the once-esteemed White House press corps. You created a fiction that legitimized a stolen presidency, justified the massive assault on basic American rights and freedoms by invoking the "war on terror" at every opportunity, helped the administration build and sustain a climate of fear among the American people, which they used as a diversion while they worked tirelessly to achieve Grover Norquist's vision of a federal government "...small enough to drown in a bathtub" -- all but the military and the security state apparatus, of course, which get unlimited funding because war, death and repression are the means BushCo uses to lock down dissent and perpetuate its own terrorist agenda of rivers of blood and unrelenting human misery. And that's just how they do business. And you, Mark, helped them do it.

If you have an ounce of self-respect left, you should probably go home and eat 20 or 30 Valiums. Leave some kind of soulful plea for understanding and forgiveness. Say the devil made you do it. That should get you off the hook in this country of raving religious insanity. But that would be a little harsh on your family, walking in on daddy's cold corpse like that.

So maybe it's a month in the public stocks at the town square, arms and head locked into place, the irate citizenry tossing eggs and cabbages. Then it's tar and feathers time, and we'll see about finding a convenient rail to ride you out of town.

Sick thing is, though, there will be no sanctions for your treachery. You'll probably have a long and lucrative career, either as a member of the media elite or as a PR creep for some rapacious multinational. The job you're doing now prepares you perfectly for PR work in corporate America. In both cases, the truth is just a silly waste product, the ability to lie convincingly is well-rewarded, and interviewing skills aren't necessary because you just write what the masters tell you.


See you in hell, Mark. And don't forget to write.



wp

[niyad]

25. BRAVO!!!!!

[C_U_L8R]

24. I've got a better idea....

why doesn't Mark Knoller do his job as a reporter