Is Bush really implementing a full-court press on media?

[realFedUp]

http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/shaw/cl-ca-shaw13mar13,2,1974225.column

Is Bush really implementing a full-court press on media?
David Shaw
Media Matters

March 13, 2005

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 determined, systematic campaign to "decertify" the professional press 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, a media critic, professor of journalism at New York University and creator-author of the Pressthink.com website (www.journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/press think).

snip

I don't reject the decertification argument because I think the Bush administration wouldn't like to get rid of a free press. I don't think the president welcomes an inquiring press any more than he would welcome a congressional version of the Question Time to which the British Parliament regularly subjects the prime minister.

Nor do I resist the decertification theory because I don't think Bush is smart enough to pull off such an elaborate, sensitive campaign. The byways of American politics are littered with the bodies of those who have underestimated Bush's intelligence. He and those he's been smart enough to hire to serve him have already achieved their three major objectives — his election to the presidency, his reelection and the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

But Iraq remains unfinished business, and given the president's determination to Americanize Iraq (and Iran?) and to privatize Social Security — as part of what I do see as a determined campaign to roll back the New Deal and the Great Society — I think he has too much on his plate to spend the time and energy necessary to decertify the press. I'm just not willing to believe the administration intends to destroy the Fourth Estate, just because they don't believe in it either.

you can write David Shaw at: [e-mail]

[AlinPA]

1. It's not Bush**, it's Karl Rove. A lot of the media are already acting

as propaganda channels. There is no need to "decertify" the media.

[AlinPA]

2. Oops. I forgot this link to article in today's NYT about propaganda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?hp&ex=1110776400&en=c0b6bad84e5bf46a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[punpirate]

3. There have been no small number...

... of presidents who've been at odds with the press, but none of them wanted to be rid of it--for one reason. Without the press, the administration's message doesn't get out to the general public.

What Bush (and, particularly, his director of communications, Dan Bartlett) have tried to do is stifle the curiosity of the press, largely through threats of diminished access and intimidation. In that, they've been highly successful.

They've had a lot of help, too, from sympathetic media leaders, such as Roger Ailes at Fox, Sumner Redstone at CBS and recently, Jack Welch at GE/NBC. Because of the ratings pressure applied by those people, CNN and the major papers continue to soft-pedal Bush policies and persist in not investigating what is prima facie corruption and authoritarian practices in the Bush administration, preferring instead to engage in "he said, she said" banter about Bush policies and practices.

And, there's not a single news service who will start investigating the Bushies and also stop covering their bullshit. The latter would hurt them at least as much as the former. If the press stopped covering every stage-play non-event created by the Bushies to sell something they want and stuck to real news, many of these ridiculous charades would quickly go away.

[realFedUp]

4. you should indicate if those were Shaw's words or your own

I recognize thefirst paragraph as Shaw's but
not sure of the others.

[punpirate]

6. I think you meant that...

... for the original poster, yes?

Cheers.

[applegrove]

5. They have the press simply spewing out details. And then the WH

gives itself a monopoly on discussing the patterns that those details mean.

I think they use the War in Iraq and the right "to propagandize" as a whip against the press. KR always knows how to morph perfectly good tools to become his own. Someone needs to pass a law making it illegal to morph the purpose and intention of the laws into new meaning. That should be a crime.

[Atman]

7. They're not "destroying" it...more like a neutron bomb

They want the infrastructure. The talking heads don't really even count as human beings, they're also a part of the accepted infrastructure that Shaw is saying they don't want to eradicate. And I agree with him only to a point. No, they don't want to decertify the press.

At least, not publicly and openly.

I'd be willing to bet that this was just another example of the administration's hubris getting the better of them. Of course, they'll manage to spin it into gold somehow. But that does more to support the argument of "decertifying" than it does to dispel it. If Bush can turn an embarrassing bumbling (Are there Blacks in Brazil, Mr. President?), any outright lie (WMD? What WMD? We were looking for liberty!) any election irregularity (many of us are still wondering what the hell went on in Ohio and why so few people other seem to care -- or so we're told) into another notch on his Charm Belt, it is difficult to overlook the brazen favoritism in the shadow of a $70,000,000 impeachment proceeding over a sexual affair.

How can Shaw argue any media legitimacy when they corporate board room controlled news outlets are giving BushCo a pass on virtually everything? When the CNN and Fox reporters are sequestered at a Baghdad hotel and forced to file every remote from the same balcony of the same hotel, as a result of the utter lawlessness outside their campaign walls, why the hell aren't they telling us where they are and why they can't leave their hotel? Every single day these men and women, supposed journalists, stand before the television cameras and tell us of the wonderful things Bush has done to this great liberated land of the former Saddam Hussein. Oh, and there's still a few rough spots, but otherwise, things are just swell.

If this is not an example of outright control by BushCo and Chief Information Officer, Karl Rove, then it at least demonstrates some cozy, symbiotic, downright disgusting rubber-stamp journalism which has de facto decertified the whole concept of an independent "news media" available on any broadcast or cable outlet.

By going slowly and deliberately, BushCo doesn't have to devote lots of "time and energy" to the decertification process. BushCo just makes it happen, hopefully quietly, so no one notices. Sure, the media may officially now be corporate shills for the BushCo war machine, but who the hell would ever report on the "decertification?"

THAT is the part Rove counts on. He can decertify the media in such a way folks don't even notice. These people are still thinking in the old reality. These are the BushCo years. Some day, if the mainstream media ever finds its balls again, and remembers whom the hell it is supposed to be serving, then maybe the history books won't refer to this dark period of one of "decertification" of the press. They'll call it what it is...Fascism.

[realFedUp]

9. well stated reply

I think Shaw is naive at best on this one.

[Dan]

8. Why destroy it, when they can buy it, like Congress

[Karenina]

10. Heh?

:freak: They SO LONG SINCE done dood it... Is this a trick question? :freak: