Wash. Post doesn't believe in "unified action" (re: W.H. press)

[donsu]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46867-2005Mar18.html


What's a Press Corps to Do?

What should the press corps do the next time the White House calls a background briefing and demands that no one identify the briefer by name?

Walk out en masse?

-snip-

The panel was called "Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Access to Government Information on the Record," and it featured a head-table heavy with Washington bureau chiefs past and present as well as advocates for aggressive, accountability-oriented journalism.

-snip-

But a forceful diverging view came from someone who wasn't even there. Overholser read a message that had been sent to her from Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., an outspoken advocate of newsroom independence, who said, "We just don't believe in unified action. . . . We can't participate in the kind of discussion you are proposing."
-snip-
--------------------------------

the panel also had this to say:

"Unified action can be having standards and holding your ground individually," he said.


well, the press core better do something cause we are not going to get off their backs until they do

[barbaraann]

1. IMHO, unified action is the ONLY thing that will work.

n/t

[toymachines]

2. unity is the only way

UNITY. it solves problems.

[mattclearing]

3. The Post will never do that.

The Post is little more than a propaganda intermediary.

They question occasionally, but let the big stuff slide with impugnity.

People should tune into today's Outlook article by Dana Milbank, and the online chat he's hosting tomorrow, if they want to know what the Post is really about.

Dana Milbank equated the right wing's lack of knowledge of the issues on Iraq (Saddam/Osama and WMD existence, from the pre-election study) as equivalent to the left's contention of the bush wire story and Bush foreknowledge of 9/11.

Nevermind the senior NASA scientist who swore something was in Bush's coat and had the enhanced photographs to prove it, or the 52 FAA warnings and a President's Daily Brief.

The Post cannot be taken seriously.

Edit: Links to aforementioned Milbank stuff:

Article attacking blogosphere:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48952-2005Mar19.html

Chat that seriously needs DU'ing:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47808-2005Mar18.html

[JHB]

7. Read "The Sideshow's rant on that:

http://sideshow.me.uk/smar05.htm#201721

It's perfectly clear that right-wing media has been doing this (steering readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts -- JHB) and has been appallingly successful.

But where is your evidence that the left has done, or attempted to do, the same? We didn't create Rush Limbaugh, The Washington Times, or any of the Scaife-funded magazines that were responsible for promoting the web of lies that were aimed at smearing the Clintons.

David Brock has detailed how this was a deliberate project - to spread any claim, no matter how unfounded, to undermine the Clintons in particular, Democrats, and liberals in general. Where is your evidence of ANYTHING similar on the left?

Instead, we demanded the facts from you, and didn't get them. When we saw that the major mainstream media was allowing a libel of Bill Clinton to be turned into a "fact", we objected. There was no evidence that Bill or Hillary Clinton had been involved in committing a crime in Whitewater, but Big Media allowed this non-story to snowball into a demand for a Special Prosecutor. Why? What facts was that based on?

---much more----

[trudyco]

4. The media is making noises but I won't believe it until they start

reporting stuff like:

Still no info on Cheneys ties to Enron and his energy policy
All vote counting and voter registration data is in neocon hands
Feeney's shading dealings
Bush's neochristian image and the Wead information
The real story of Gannon/Guckert
The real evil of WH propoganda -Gannon to paid "reporters" to videos
The suppression of the 2004 exit polls
How the WH planned on attacking Iraq when they first took office (per Paul O'Neil's book) and what that implies
Possible Draft in the works
Haliburton and other companies that are crooked
Billions of dollars in Iraq unaccounted for

God, there is so much to cover that could be really interesting, not to mention its really what patriotism and Democracy is about...

I find it interesting they complain about the Plame incident - that reporters should be shielded from producing their sources. But it seems to me that you can legislate to shield whistle blowers who are exposing a crime, but not whistle blowers who are causing a crime.

[Al-CIAda]

5. And don't forget the TRILLIONS MISSING from the Pentagon budget,

4TRILLION and counting so far... unfucking real.

[Wilms]

6. .

[gratuitous]

8. Hey, you got your problems, and Len Downie has his

Namely, how to make sure his social calendar is filled, and the party in power has far more interesting soirees with better liquor.

And just what ground has Mr. Downie and the Post been holding? First in line to fall on its knees before this corrupt administration?

[Wilms]

9. kick n/t