McClellan and Me, Part II: Did I Shift from Target to Influence?
| Mon Jun. 2, 2008 8:01 AM PDT
Did I help motivate Scott McClellan to write his book blasting the Bush White House as a den of disingenuousness?
Over the weekend, Politico published McClellan's original proposal for his book. (Hat tip to Ryan Grim, who's written for Mother Jones, for snatching this scoop.) In the proposal McClellan promised, "I will look at what is behind the media hostility toward the President and his Administration, and how much of it is rooted in a liberal bias."
Yes, that ol' "liberal bias." McClellan promised to skewer the media for being run by out-of-touch left-leaning journalists:
Fairness is defined by the establishment media within the left-of-center boundaries they set. They defend their reporting as fair because both sides are covered. But, how fair can it be when it is within the context of the liberal slant of the reporting? And, while the reporting of the establishment media may be based on true statements and facts, is it an accurate picture of what is really happening? And, how much influence do the New York Times and Washington Post have in shaping the coverage? And, why does the media do such a poor job of holding itself to account, or acknowledging their own mistakes?
But, McClellan said in the proposal he would go beyond an examination of the MSMers:
In addition to covering the above issues and questions, I will get into the influence of activist liberal reporters, like Keith Olbermann, Nation editor David Corn, and Washington Post blogger Dan Froomkin, and activist liberal media personalities, like Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Bill Maher, and Arianna Huffington.
Well, in the end, it seems that I might have had some influence on McClellan, whom I tangled with at the White House. In two books, The Lies of George W. Bush and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (the latter co-written with Michael Isikoff on Newsweek), I documented how the Bush administration wielded false information and half-truths (at best) as part of a PR campaign to win public support for the invasion of Iraq. That is exactly what McClellan describes and criticizes in his own book. By the way, the subtitle of my first Bush book was "Mastering the Politics of Deception." What's McClellan's subtitle? "Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."
So what happened to that "liberal bias." Once outside of the White House bubble, McClellan seems to have discovered that--guess what?--it was closer to the truth than his own press briefings.
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Comments
Submitted by capt - Hussein (not verified) on Mon Jun. 2, 2008 9:40 AM PDT.
DC, you should go back to calling them lies - you sound like you have gone soft on the lies?
It is a fair word and accurate.
The media isn't liberal at all. In fact, nothing liberal ever comes out over the media unless it is something the media has to do. Media should tell the news and views like it is without the EXTREME conservative RIGHT WING slant against liberals. Actually 90% of the country is liberal and only 10% is really conservative; so it would be better to have a liberal slant as the majority of the population are liberal, whether they know it or not.
I don't have a problem with you crowing a little about your possible influence in bringing Mr. McClellan into the sanctified sanctuary of America's main stream media thinking. You deserve a gold star for the effort.
Nevertheless, I continue to believe that you and others of your MSM brothers and sisters would better serve the country if you stopped blaming McClellan for road-blocking your pathway to the facts of the undertakings of this [despicable] Bush Administration.
The truth is always available....It is the role of the reporter and the organization employing the reporter to find the source, accurately gather, analyze and report the facts. In my view, the MSM has done a very poor job in performing that role.
The failure has persisted during the Bush years, the Clinton years before Bush and for a couple of decades prior. The proprietors of our free press organizations and the journalists employed by these "news organizations" must decide if their role is to be that of the traditional Fourth Estate with its public service agenda or is the primary focus of each of the respective media entities to be profit alone.
You decide. Then layout your mission, your goals and objectives, your accurately described and packaged product [e.g., Websites, print media, television, radio programs, etc.] for each of your products. Then the public will be able to judge the worth of your output, categorize it as factual news, analysis, opinion and/or just entertainment.
Submitted by Deborah Emin (not verified) on Mon Jun. 2, 2008 2:10 PM PDT.
I hate to be disagreeable when it is great to have the rats beginning to understand why the ship must be sunk but the job of the media, as defined by many in the media is to entertain. Since they assume that most of us forget the important stuff and just retain what is there to have fun with, that is what they do. We should blame them for that, for underestimating us and our need for the information and go after them for not giving us what is there to be known. But we are also able to do even today what I.F. Stone did 40 years ago, read the papers, lots of them, and see exactly what is going on and then let others know about it too.
It is always difficult for reporters covering a venue like the White House to assert clearly they are being lied to by the press secretary or the President. I'm sure it would mean being ignored when trying to ask questions and eventually losing one's credentials to attend at all. The party in power resents being called liars even when they are avoiding truth as though it were Typhoid Mary rushing to give them a hug. Such resentment winds up being touted as disrespect and lack of patriotism. In the case of the GOP it will mean certain future punishment.
Before we all get a big head over what a revelation McClellan's book is, we might want to consider the possibility that this is a Trojan horse put out by Rove and company. The book still follows a basic script of Bush as not responsible, as courageous and as a man of faith, when indeed, most of the country has arrived at the conclusion that this President is a compulsive liar, a sociopath, and much more dangerously a thief. It is sad that we as citizens are now caught after January 2009 of trying to decide where we stand when this Administration is cited for crimes against humanity. It has gone way past impeachment !!!
Maybe the final book doesn't exactly match McClellan's initial proposal because McClellan was afraid that if he made his intentions known, then the Administration and its espianage apparatus would have torpedoed it, or outed him as something awful, like...maybe one of those *liberals*....
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Mon Jun. 2, 2008 3:42 PM PDT.
OK, McClellan appears to have been a true beleiver until he was outside the beltway bubble long enough. However, at least he figured it out. What's worse, drinking the kool-aid for years and and waiting a couple more to spit it out, or drinking the kool-aid and a couple years later asking for more, like Bush's other press secretaries? I don't see McClellan being any worse than John Dean, except the passage of time, and I have no problems with John Dean.
Kal, I believe that you posit a false premise ...one that many reporters hide behind.
The Administration is not a monolith. There are other sources within any Administration [this one included] other than the 'Press Secretary'.
Until otherwise discredited, I will continue to believe that governments, corporations, and various other groups will attempt to manipulate us [the Press included] to have us believe that they [the government, the corporation, et al] have complete control of their respective messages and that the only output source from the Administration, et al is the supreme leader (with the SL's word oftentimes reported out by the Press spokesperson). I beg to differ. I believe reporters know better.
Unfortunately, in this day's political and corporate environment, the easy way out for reporters is to accept the spokesperson's words as the definitive truth. This approach maintains the camaraderie between the media persons' and the government or corporate body to which each of the respective reporters is assigned. This has the disquieting effect of short changing the general public ...apparently a small price to pay in the careers of some reporters and is a widely accepted method that preserves the wellbeing of the respective corporation that employs each.
I consider Mr. Corn to be one of the best. I read his work whenever possible.... But, I believe in this rendering and in his article "McClellan and Me: Why this White House Stonewaller Has No Right to Complain About the Press" of a few days ago, he attempts [for the entire Media] to defend the indefensible.
I admire Scott McClellan for publishing a book that exposes the deceptions (at best) and in-your-face malfeasance of the Bush Wh**e House, although I certainly think that he could have spoken out much earlier and much stronger.
Dare we expect that Colin Powell will SOMEDAY speak out against this insult to all decency of the last 8 years? I could ask the same of C. Rice, David Gregory and other profiteers from the misery caused by their lies and inaction. But, no, I have absolutely no expectations of their ever rising to the level of Scott McClellan.
Submitted by logistics company (not verified) on Fri Jun. 6, 2008 12:41 AM PDT.
Maybe the final book doesn't exactly match McClellan's initial proposal
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