There is plenty of buzz at the moment over the claim made by CNN’s Jessica Yellin to Anderson Cooper that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war. The Politico’s Mike Calderone reprints the relevant transcript:
“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives  and I was not at this network at the time  but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”
But then a shocked Cooper jumped in, asking, “You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?”
“Not in that exact…. They wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces,” Yellin said. “They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical, and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes, that was my experience.”
So for all of this buzz, Yellin actually backtracked from her claim of “pressure” to one of editing. I thought the establishment media operated on a higher plane than nitwit bloggers precisely because they have an editorial process — both as to individual stories and overall programming.
It appears that Yellin was referring to MSNBC execs. Thus, like the other examples of journos speaking truthiness to powah marshalled by Rick Ellensburg — Katie Couric (who had a viewer e-mail forwarded to her by an evil executive), Ashleigh Banfield and Phil Donahue – the powah always seems to be former employers (to wit, NBC and MSNBC).  Ellensburg somehow manages to omit that Banfield hosted an MSNBC program with lousy ratings, was a diva, and clashed with then NBC Uber-diva Couric, while Donahue had a program with less than 20% of the audience Bill O’Reilly was drawing and less than half the audience Connie Chung was drawing — and it was extremely costly to produce because it had a studio audience.
In contrast, NewsBusters has example after example of the establishment media’s ample coverage of the antiwar message and antiwar protests before the invasion of Iraq. There is also a link to the MRC’s May 2007 Media Reality Check “The Media Before the War: Facts vs. Liberal Mythology,” which in turn links to an October 2002 MRC study that found nearly three in five of soundbites from members of Congress (59%) opposed the use of force, roughly double the percentage of Senators and Representatives who actually voted against using force (29%). And before we finish putting Donahue up on the cross, his program was still on MSNBC when he declared on February 24, 2003:
“People in other parts of the world want to know why our weapons of mass destruction are good and everybody else’s is bad….We have to confront the hypocrisy….Let us be honest. We’ve got the biggest thing that goes boom in the history of the universe and we appear to be rather lofty and pious in our demands that nobody else have one!”
Indeed, as I have previously noted, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and the L.A. Times were among those throwing around the Vietnam “quagmire” analogies before the invasion.
One last thing is notable about the charges being made by these fearless journalists: there are no names attached to them. Journalists are usually focused on the “who” as much as the “what, where, when, why and how” of a story. This bunch seems more comfy with making explosive yet anonymous charges of wrongdoing, much as Sen. Joe McCarthy did during the Red Scare.
Update: Jessica Yellin “clarifies” her remarks, in limited, modified backpedal mode, and still without names:
No, senior corporate leadership never asked me to take out a line in a script or re-write an anchor intro. I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work; my interaction was with senior producers. What was clear to me is that many people running the broadcasts wanted coverage that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the country at the time. It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.
Note that she does not identify any specifics of how or when the “many people” made this “clear” to her.  She just wants it known that she did not want to catch the patriotic fe-vah! It’s a common journalistic mindset.
“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only for wallowing in.”-Katerine Mansfield
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”-Sydney J. Harris
Thomas Ellers is a putz.
Karl,
You may want to read “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans before making any statements regarding Senator Joseph McCarthy using “anonymous charges of wrongdoing” in your blog. He was not part of the House Un-American Activities Committee who used those tactics.
I am aware that McCarthy gets treated more harshly than he deserved (though he deserved a fair amount). I’m invoking the Tailgunner solely for the pop culture juice that HUAC lacks. Plus, The Manchurian Candidate was on TCM last night.
This McClellan dude was, like, pulling the MSM’s leg back when he was a McBush’s media woodchipper. Now he’s pulling the MSM’s finger.
I get it.
No telling where that thing’s been. Karl, brush your teeth. I want to tug on your tongue to see if you’ll gas.
That Glen Greenwald, he is one smart dude. I think his writing was the muse that caused the NY Times to write an article, and his words were read into the Senate record. Take that, you neocon fascists.
May I have another?
Glen is too busy to deal with this kind of petty snarking.
Women: no matter how much you like your gay male friends, and how well you get along, they are never going to have sex with you.
Yes, I imagine the Gleens do prefer heavy petting over petty snarking. Thank You for the reminder, Mona.
Absolutely correct not Mona. Thats what sockpuppets were born for
As a best-selling author, and widely respected columnist, Senor Gleenwald would not sully himself by wading through this cesspool of wingnuttia.
“They” have also pressured people not to purchase Glenn’s latest book.
– Yeh, but banjo sales have gone through the roof in the last few years.
– On another note, yet again, McCains supporters, this time in the person of Iraq-Vets, have put out a TV Ad speaking specifcally to the fact that O! has not been there in over 2 years so how can he have any idea of what hes talking about. 2nd shot across the bow in 2 days, while the Obamaettes scurry around changing their story by the hour. O!’s inexperience – The gift that keeps on giving.
– Maybe O! can recover by explaining his plan to base the troops in Porta Rico so they’ll be ready to quash any al Qaeda uprising on a moments notice.
McClellan-mania (UPDATED)…
Released yesterday, additional excerpts of the former press-secretary’s forthcoming book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (which is already #1 at Amazon) continue to elicit commentary all ove…
“I thought the establishment media operated on a higher plane than nitwit bloggers precisely because they have an editorial process  both as to individual stories and overall programming.”
No, you think this becasue their coverage echoed your position. That reporters and anchors on the inside – as well as Bush’s own press secretary – are admitting that the press laid down and pressure was applied from above is pretty damning. And you really have to be a partisan tool to try and still maintain that they were the liberal media during that period. Maybe they’re ALL lying….
Using citations that don’t give a relative or qualitative picture of the coverage from that time period was just for the humor, I suppose.
It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.
You think maybe they still do?
I thought the establishment media operated on a higher plane than nitwit bloggers because Mike Barnicle said so yesterday. Everyone but you got the joke. Then again, someone who flees from the cited statistics and examples into their own subjective impression of all media coverage probably doesn’t get a lot of things.
I thought the establishment media operated on a higher plane than nitwit bloggers because Mike Barnicle said so yesterday.
Dan Rather and many others have previously made that case, also. It is a pretty common argument among the establishment media.
Anyone want to take odds that Yellin’s “more positive” would be more accurately characterized as “less negative?”
When you live in Mao Land, Berkeley Land seems positively right-wing.
Yeah this is one of the more obnoxious Iraq myths, the “we were too much the cheerleaders in the buildup to war” myth. Basically what it means is “we didn’t work actively to undermine and lie about President Bush and actually covered Iraq’s evils,” a mistake they have worked hard to reverse after 2004’s Democratic strategy memo reached their media allies.
Oh, I get it now. I would leave the humor to Collins and Jeff if I were you….
Fleeing form stats? They picked one ‘stat’ – the war position of soundbites of senators. I wonder why they picked that? Becasue it fits the a priori hypothesis? Is that really the best overall reflection of media slant? Or did they measure a bunch of stuff – number of experts on both sides cited, representation of contrary evidence vs. gov’t claims, etc. – and that’s the only one that supported what they want to say? It’s a little – uh – arbitrary, to say the least.
If you buy this as a ‘stat’ I know one thing about you: you are not a social scientist. This is an intro-level e.g. of a misleading way to measure human behavior.
I love this. Bush’s own press secretary says that they knew what they were pedaling was tripe, and then says he feels the media was insufficiently adversarial. Reporters – and an anchor – are now coming out and admitting there was executive and editorial pressure to go easy on skepticism of WH claims.
The neocon reaction: they’re all lying, and the media was liberal in the run up to the war.
It’s like y’all have some sort of a forcefield from empiricism unless the evidence agrees with what you already think.
At least you wouldn’t sound absolutely ridiculous if you said “Sure, the war was real popular so they backed off THEN – but soon after they went back to being the liberal media.”
Nope. Not afraid to stand up to reality.
steve, the dude was a PR flack. He wasn’t a even a political strategist, let alone a military one. He was a mouthpiece, and not a very good one at that.
Executive pressure? So far, that CNN hack has stated the opposite. So, as usual, steve is pulling things out of his ass. I guess the media did not lie enough for steve. “Rush to war” ring any bells? Afghan winter? Sandstorms? 10’s of thousands of estimated casualties?
“steve, the dude was a PR flack. He wasn’t a even a political strategist, let alone a military one. He was a mouthpiece, and not a very good one at that.”
Even if so, it deosn’t counter what people in media are saying.
And many with credibility have similarly defected from the Bush to tell us that this administration is FOS – like Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, CT Whitmann, Colin Powell, Jack Goldsmith, Eric Shineski,George Tenet,Matt Dowd – that’s off the top of my head.
And many more have stayed because they believe this administration is trying to do the right thing. But they probably don’t have credibility because they don’t agree with steve.
Shinseki – He was fired, wasn’t he?
I don’t know, JD, maybe steve is right.
OLBERMANN: Scott McClellan, I don’t want to get too fulsome on you
but I don’t think you’re going to be dining out on the book for the rest
of life. I think this a primary document of American history and I’m
very impressed with it. At some point people will be teaching history
based on it.
http://tinyurl.com/5gcrzm
Can’t get much more credible than that, huh, steve?
Holy hell. A Soros funded book being pimped by Olberdickhead.
*snort*
oh, and..
BERETS FOR EVERYONE!!!
maggie – I enjoyed typing that. That one little fucking whopper of a lie that Lurch told about 8000 times, and the Left simply believes.
It’s the first administration to have those who leave write self-aggrandizing tell-all books titled, “If they had only listened to me.” Ever.
Funny how the steves of the world never mention guys like Former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson when this issue comes up. Or the unanimous reports of the Senate Intell Cmte or the Robb-Silberman commission on prewar intell. Because that would blow a ginormous hole in the fantasy that if the press had just screeched louder and more often, things would have been different.
Rather, steve doesn’t like the stats or the examples. He has none of his own, mind you. He just doesn’t like mine. And had he clicked on the link for it, he would have found it referred to members of Congress because the study was focused the Congressional debate on the AUMF for Iraq.
Couric’s big charge was that someone fwded her a viewer e-mail (gasp)! Banfield’s problems are addressed in the initial post. Yellin now denies there was executive pressure, per the update. And Greenwald’s piece is chock full of journos who disagree with the charge that they fell down on the job.
Heh.
“First we had to ascertain what kind of book he wanted to write,” said Osnos, a former Washington Post reporter and editor. “We are journalists, independent-minded publishers. We weren’t interested in a book that was just a defense of the Bush administration. It had to pass our test of independence, integrity and candor.”
http://tinyurl.com/5467ex
Wow. Mr. Press Secretary just needed help getting the words together.
I have a feeling the “editorial guidance” was along the lines of, “well, we expect a certain message from this book, if you get my drift.”
Huh, so the way to judge an administration is by how many people leave it? I guess they all must suck then.
We weren’t interested in a book that was just a defense of the Bush administration. It had to pass our test of independence, integrity and candor.â€Â
Yes… so integrity and candor = saying what we want to hear, bashing Bush. Very independant, that. Not just anyone is bashing Bush these days!