Rich: Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished (Rips WH Press Corp)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/opinion/08rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

AS we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Drudge Report and the second anniversary of the Jayson Blair scandal, American journalists are in a race with the runaway bride for public enemy No. 1. Newspaper circulation is on the skids, the big three network anchor thrones are as precarious as King Lear's, bloggers are on the rampage, and the government is embracing fake reporters and threatening to jail real ones. A Pew Research Center poll shows that Americans now trust the press less than every other major institution, from government to medicine to banks. We can only be grateful that the matchups didn't include pornographers or Major League Baseball.

Then - just when you think things couldn't get any worse - along comes the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

<snip>

It's the press's performance that is discomforting. Once these dinners were just typical Washington rubber-chicken fare, unseen on television and unnoticed beyond the Beltway. That began to change in 1987 when Michael Kelly, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, invited as a guest Fawn Hall, the glamorous mystery woman in the Iran-contra scandal. Over the years, Kelly's amusing prank has metastasized into a pageant of obsequiousness and TV Land glitz, typified by this year's roster of A-list stars from the 1970's (Goldie Hawn, Mary Tyler Moore) and C-list publicity hounds from the present (Jon Cryer, Ron Silver, the axed "American Idol" contestant Constantine Maroulis). As this gaggle arrives via red carpet, it's hard to know which is worse: watching reporters suck up to politicians in power or watching them clamor to rub shoulders with Joe Pantoliano.

Jonathan Klein, the new boss at CNN and a dinner attendee, hit the right note when, in an April speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, he made the "modest proposal" that the gala be canceled and that the White House Correspondents' Association "instead spend that time and energy creating standards - and enforcing them - for those who would call themselves White House correspondents." He meant Jeff Gannon, who masqueraded as a reporter at White House news briefings for two years before it was discovered that his news organization was a front for G.O.P. activists and that his most impressive portfolio had been as a model in ads for an escort service. But there's a bigger issue here than Mr. Gannon. The Washington press corps' eagerness to facilitate and serve as dress extras in what amounts to an administration promotional video can now be seen as a metaphor for just how much the legitimate press has been co-opted by all manner of fakery in the Bush years.

[NMDemDist2]

1. wow from the NYTimes no less too n/t

[KaryninMiami]

2. Yippee-- "Our Jeffy" makes it to the NY Times!

This is great - mainstream media is not letting the story die. Maybe not quite in the caliber we'd all like to see, but at least it is trickling in.
I'm still waiting for my the moment when Carl Rove goes in front of the media during a press conference on live t.v. and says "I did not have sexual relations with that man".

It's none of my business whether he did or not frankly, nor do I care. But I just want to see him say those very words....

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Continuing in the narrative

Yes, Mrs. Bush was funny, but the mere sight of her "interrupting" her husband in an obviously scripted routine prompted a ballroom full of reporters to leap to their feet and erupt in a roar of sycophancy like partisan hacks at a political convention.

You mean they aren't really partisan hacks at a political convention? Well, they had me fooled.

[Skittles]

4. thank you

and what a f***ing disgusting display it was

[Daphne08]

5. ...and this paragraph is sheer genius!

The more the press blurs these lines on its own, the more openings government propagandists have to erect their Potemkin villages with impunity. "Our once noble calling," wrote Philip Meyer in The Columbia Journalism Review last fall, "is increasingly difficult to distinguish from things that look like journalism but are primarily advertising, press agentry or entertainment." You know we're in trouble when Jeff Gannon, asked about his murky past on Bill Maher's show on April 29, moralistically joked that "usually the way it works is people become reporters before they prostitute themselves." No less chastening was the experience of watching Matt Drudge, in conversation with Brian Lamb the same day, sternly criticize Fox for cutting off the final moments of the Bush news conference for Paris Hilton's reality series. When Mr. Drudge is a more sober spokesman for the sanctity of news than his fellow revelers at the correspondents' dinner, pigs just may start to fly.


:loveya: I LOVE Frank Rich. He's always dead on target!

[Demit]

6. I wish Frank Rich would go on tour. He's been calling this stuff for years

He and Paul Krugman are the two best things about the NYT. Another bulls-eye!

[Maeve]

7. Question--he notes that Laura never really saw "Desperate Housewives" ...

But it's my understanding that they don't own any horses, either. So whose stallion was George milking??

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[cap]

9. why arent these lies on a par with Al Gore's lies during the 2000 election

eom