Reply #19: Is Bush gunning for the media? [View All]

[dzika]

From decaturdailydemocrat.com:
March 16, 2005

Is Bush gunning for the media?

By DAVID SHAW
The Los Angeles Times

Cyberspace is increasingly our culture's primary hotbed for interesting, provocative theories - many of them as paranoid as they are provocative. One of the most interesting and provocative (and paranoid) of those espoused in recent weeks argues that the Bush administration has embarked upon a systematic campaign to ``decertify'' the professional media corps, ``to strip them of their traditional influence in national affairs,'' to eradicate the very idea that they have a ``legitimate role to play in our politics,'' according to Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University and creator-author of the Pressthink.com Web site (www.journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink).

Although Rosen first began writing about this theory in September, it didn't begin to gain critical mass in cyberspace until March 2, when Eric Boehlert vigorously advanced the debate on Salon.com.

Like Rosen, Boehlert made clear that he was talking about far more than White House attempts to manage the news or to go over the heads of the press corps, directly to the people - something every administration tries to do. No, Boehlert said, ``Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.''

The Bush administration, Boehlert contends, ``is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. ... Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts - the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.''

Every occupant of the White House has done battle with the media, but Bush is more media-averse than any president in history. Bush had fewer solo news conferences in his first term than any president since William Howard Taft, and certainly the examples Boehlert cites amount to a propagandistic subversion of the free press.

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