Among the Washington Press corps today, talk is centering nearly exclusively on the “timing” of the information flow that followed Vice President Dick Cheney’s non-lethal Saturday hunting accident (the VP sprayed birdshot into one of his party)—watching the White House press briefing right now, I find myself mesmerized by the interest reporters are showing in this story, from the tenacity of their questioning of Scott Mcclellan to their desire to turn the delays of the release of the full details to the national press into a cover-up that rivals Watergate.
The reason for the press’s agitation is clear, of course: they are the loop, you see, and when the White House delays getting the loop in the loop (even if doing so is matter of getting all their ducks in a row, so to speak—which could involve simply piecing together details and a time line, or perhaps picking embarrassing bits of stray buckshot out of the narrative, I don’t know the particulars), the press as a whole rises is great disdain.
To be clear, the White House probably should have released information piecemeal as it became available, if only to stave off an entire Monday’s worth of coverage. But that they did not signifies nothing more than bad judgment and hints that they hoped to delay the embarrassment they knew would likely ensue.
Of course, the importance of the hunting accident story is nil. The investigating sheriff determined what everyone present during the incident knew: an accident had taken place; the VP (as one reporter put it, was “the shooter”); and the victim, Harry Wittington, was not seriously injured. One of the local papers in Corpus Cristi had the story very quickly, but in was not until early Sunday morning that the story broke nationally.
So in order to keep alive what is essentially no more than a minor embarrassment to the Vice President and gin up as much controversy as possible, the press has determined to make it a story about why they weren’t more immediately and breathlessly—and in advance of the full details—informed of the hunting accident, which would have given them an extra day to beat a non-story into important news.
Why the reaction of the press (and even now, FOXNew has cut away from the McClellan press briefing, the press secretary having moved off the topic of the hunting accident, and is now showing execrable new “Dayside,” where talk is about…the hunting accident) is so troubling to me is that this story (which is quickly becoming nothing more than a meta-story) is now taking all the oxygen away from far more important stories breaking from this weeking—from Iran’s escalation of threats and rumors of the mounting of a possible US offensive, to Kofi Annan’s solicitation of US military in Darfur, to Al Gore’s remarks in Wahabbist Saudi Arabia that told of his own country’s post-911 “abuses” of Muslims.
Each of these stories deserves its own post—and I hope to be able to accomplish that today—but the point of this partcular post is to highlight how the majority of our mainstream media has become so self-important and self-referential that they now officially consider themselves actors in stories rather than simpy conduits of stories (there is a time and place for both, I should think, but in general, they should be sticking to the latter so long as they are clinging to the pretense of “objectivity” and “neutrality”—and even “reporting,” rather than narrating).
It took the Washington White House press corp at least 20 questions before anyone even broached Iran’s threat to walk away from the NPT—and their President’s call to Iran’s citizens to brace themselves for battle—and when they finally did, FOXNews broke away from the story in favor of more “analysis” of the VP’s hunting accident (this included helpful scrolling factoids such as “Harry Truman liked to hunt” and “Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton famously blah blah blah”).
Saturday I wrote of how the framing of a particular story will drive public perception, and that—consequently—when the spotlighting of such framing is removed, the story will evolve into its natural form. When I wrote this, I never thought it a controversial statement, but one of my progressive commenters took issue even with that bland assertion—suggesting to me that we have truly reached a point in contemporary political discourse where, from those at certain points on the political spectrum, some every single assertion is to be perfunctorily challenged as a way to forestall debate, and make the exchange of meaningful ideas glacial if not impossible.
In a society that relies upon an informed populace to elect officials who represent our interests, we rely on the press to report—and in its editorial function to arrange the news by dint of importance—so that we can use the facts of that reporting to inform our own interests, and elect the people we think will best serve them. The system breaks down when the media becomes an advocate whose positions align with a particular political ideology, or when rhetoric becomes about the rhetoric, and about those espousing the rhetoric.
At least, so long as the media is allowed to keep up its pretense of being information conduits who behave evenhandedly in their adversarial role as skeptics of “power” (which does NOT, I submit, mean siding with the party out of power, as some people seem to interpret this mandate, but rather to treat all elected officials as the “power”).
****
update: see also, Editor and Publisher. And Rick Moran, who is more bothered by the withholding of information than I am. Similarly, on Robert Novak on FOXNews just noted that the withholding of information to “avoid having this discussed on the Sunday talk shows” speaks to a problem with this White House.
Yes. And no. Because this White House has been conditioned by the negative press it receives to try to get its side of the story out in such a way that it doesn’t get away from them before they’ve had a chance to comment, the White House press corps has to be willing to accept how its own culture of antagonism makes the White House reluctant to use them as a first line of information dissemination. Which is why, while I think the delay was a political blunder (as I mention in my post), I understand the impulse to get all the facts coordinated before releasing the story. Which, in fact, until that time, is only a partial story, anyway: “BREAKING: VP GUNS DOWN HUNTING PARTNER. No specifics yet, but early reports suggest that the Mr Cheney may have had an earlier argument with Harry Wittingham, 78, over what kind of soup to pack in the thermoses. Developing…”
As it was, I learned about it in its entirety Sunday, and was so unimpressed with the non-newsworthy nature of the thing that I didn’t even comment.
No story is more important than one that might throw dirt on the Rethuglians. And, the White House’s manipulation of information – proof positive that we just took another step toward Bush’s Fascist Amerikkka. Heil Bushitler.
T/w; school, as in if only I’d paid attention in school, I wouldn’t be so confused now.
I’m sorry, I just can’t remember… How long was it before Teddy K bothered to call the press about Chappaquiddick?
– We are watching the “dying of the light” in the contemporary National press. At some point the narrative about the narrative will devolve into the loop just serving the loop, and mainstream America will continue apace, even to a greater degree if possible, to generally ignore the nattering, if for no better reason than most “folk” think the Washington press core is looney anyway. The Left has based its hopes and ground game on the notion of “nuance”, wherein if you can get to the story behind the story the “badness” of your opponent can be disclosed and you will win by default. The fatal flaw in that approach is that most people can barely stomach the “News” and the sad, partisan way its presented, much less patiently wade through the tortured logic and “reason’ de’tarre” that the left so hopes to champion in each and every persidential bowel movement. I’m simply amazed that people that consider themselves intellectually “elite” also think that public displays like Gore engaged in yesterday, on the enemies turf, is somehow going to translate into a winning formula at the American ballot box. All that can be said with any assurance is they continue to bask in their own warming words of sophonism and beligerance, while they alienate and studiously ignore the real feelings of the larger mainstream that they would seek to support them. Brilliant strategy…..
I think it was bird-shot, not buck-shot.
NOW I DEMAND PIE!
Jeff,
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show “On the Story” but it’s kind of humorous in light of this post. It’s a show in which reporters interview reporters about reporting.
I should have some sort of pithy-ism for this, but I’m still bemused.
BRD
Yeah, yeah, but when will they get around to the real story of the Rethuglicans once again turning on the weather machine and pointing it at the east coast in an attempt to hide The Evil One’s malicious, and no doubt intentional, shooting.
Although given the press’s record during Katrina, and the entire Iraq war, it almost seems like a prudent course of action to keep all news stories out of their hands for at least the first 24 hours.
Hubris
I once heard MTV’s programming described as, “ A 50 year old executive’s impression of what a 13 year old wants to watch.”
News agencies now operate under that same principle. They have shifted their focus from important events to what is simply entertaining. Unfortunately, something in their ratings analysis must point to pursuing a story about Cheney shooting a guy in the ass over Iran’s global threats.
Their pursuit of entertainment over legitimate news is the only thing that could explain the continued coverage of Michael Jackson over the past few years. BECAUSE I COULD GIVE A FUCK ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON!
My end conclusion is that IF the ratings data is correct, and American citizens prefer this type of news story, then we are all FUCKED.
Imagine the reaction if Cheney and his friend had left the party to sneak off and have sex, Cheney in his drunken bumbling had shot him at point blank range, then he had paniced and ran off to leave his friend to bleed to death.
He would be facing 40 years in the US Senate.
Good thoughts.
BTW, it’s “corps,” not “corp.” The latter word, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t exist.
Natesnake,
As I recall, one of the more interesting moments in music marketing was when the Billboard top albums switched it’s rating basis from airplay to sales. Within a month or two of that shift, Nirvana’s album, “Nevermind” became a huge hit and spawned, among other things, the birth of grunge. Other similar acts (such as Soundgarden) were then hunted down, cultivated and co-opted. Soundgarden, Green Day and others had a reasonable history of music prior to being “discovered” via this new means of tracking hits. Meanwhile, the traditional machinery of producing pop machines was by and large then relegated to very young audiences that didn’t exhibit strong purchasing independence but could be targeted aggressively by well-produced pop acts (Insync, Backstreet Boys, etc.) The majority of music for older audiences then became significantly more fragmented (with the exception of some urban genres).
I think that this may not be too dissimilar to what’s happening with media and news. Blogs and blog chatter are indicators of ‘what people are talking about’ and there is a slow shift in media providers learning to understand what this new information consumption data means. However, given nonsense like that quoted above, slow is the operative word.
BRD
The main issue that must be addressed is that “the news” is and always has been in the modern era a vehicle for profit. Advirtising dollars are the fuel, and in order to bring in more viewers, the MSM news organs have become a form of entertainment. But what has made this train wreck harder to stomach is their belief that they have not been sensational (or entertaining?) enough.
Katrina brought this to a greater audience, but many on the right have been bemoaning this trend for years. As soon as repotrters asked how someone (that is a politician, police officer, or rape victim) felt, not what happened, it was game over.
That being said, and I am glad that the guy was OK (relatively speaking)this episode really will make a good SNL type skit. It writes itself.
Lot of nonsense being written in the mainstream media over what amounts to a hunting accident.
Although Cheney’s accident is a pretty good metaphor for the Iraq fiasco.
Carl, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I see that I was writing, my ideas were not all that one minded.
BRD, What the Blogosphere has also offered is a lack of pretense. We know what poster believes, the community that springs up around that site, and can sift the information found there appropriately. The free market of ideas and open source are the greatest threat now to traditonal media. Paper is dying (although Lileks really has it right that no one else could cover local information better, and by tis I include local television), magazines have to be showing some simmilar trends, and we have allready wittnesed the early signs in televison.
It’s not just the national media engaging in this level of navel-gazing, either: http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/newsarchive/6853290/detail.html
To me, this story should be headlined: “Our reporters are kinda stupid.”
I haven’t watched any talking head reaction to this VP story, but I’d be really surprised if it’s not used to flog gun control somehow. I expect to see stories within days quoting “experts” about how guns are more dangerous to those we know, three times more likely to shoot someone in the household, etc. All the same tired, discredited garbage.
– even when it finds itself going into the most interesting places…..
Anyone bashing the put-a-gun-in-everyone’s-hand crowd can’t be all bad.
Texas;–a very good reason to live in California.
Earthling: The Bradys (not the Bunch) have already made a statement. Paraphrased: You know the VP has asked me to go hunting with him a number of times. *crosschecking*
Yeha. Here’s Hugh’s summary by way of Mary Katharine Ham
That’s why its important for the press to be told of things. And why they get pissed off when Scottie pulls this crap:
Who ever said they were just conduits? and that “power” equals being elected?
Goss, you’ve succeeded in parodying yourself.
Twice.
Read about the stunning defeat of socialism worldwide here.
Jeff, you really need to get rid of the television in your house, or at least the TV connection and keep it around for DVDs. Every time the TV mouth-breathers pretend to cover news but end up doing instead the same old low-brow entertainment they always do, I get the feeling your blood pressure starts to spike.
Unplug, dude. Come back to the text.
— Neil Postman
Actus, you’ve obviously missed the point. The breathlessness of the media describing the timing of their own involvement in a story is important to no one.
Oh god they do talk about themselves too much. Yes. But when scottie is pulling that crap, they should ask away untill he stops it.
Please, please, please, let Ted Kennedy say something about this, please oh please.
“Who ever said they were just conduits?”
– People that believe in majority rule and a representitive Democratic Republic. Typically not your average Socialist….
Hmmmm…. well that certainly looked strange….. heh… any way…you get the idea actus… as hard as you try not too…
But this is just stupid!
Getting peppered with bird shot is no big deal, i mean i guess in the face might mean a hospital visit.
But I got peppered in the leg once pheasant hunting in heavy brush, and didn’t ever go to the hospital.
All the headlines scream SHOT.
it isn’t the same thing at all.
Hmmm.
You should read some of the nonsense on NRO’s The Corner about this.
What a non-event.
They can’t just be conduits, and stenographers. They have to have a more active role in finding and reporting. Or should at least.
There other powers in our society besides the elected. The media is one. So is business, labor, etc…
Same thing happened to me with target loads while shooting skeet. It stings like a bitch, but not worth a hospital visit. Tweezers do the trick.
Unless you’re 12” from the muzzle. Then I’d reconsider the hospital visit. I’m a pansy though.
– I suppose its not practical to think that a smattering of personal opinion and “color” will never impose into the facts on the ground. Reporters are human, with human emotions and personal politics, all the normal baggage. But I’m pretty sure its safe to say most people would like to know the who, what, where, and when, and let the story details and facts do the “why” for itself. On the other hand like I said, if you’re the minority with an agenda, then the Editorializing press is a desperate need, particularly when a good sized segment wishes to pander to your perfidity.
Actus,
They have to have a more active role in finding and reporting.
This is, far as I’m concerned, a point which merits consideration (debate, or even agreement). I think the objection that some folks have is when they move so far from the notion of being a “reporter” of facts, to a translator of world events, digesting data and regurgitating it into the mouths of the ignorant, misguided public, that they lose sight of the actual trade in facts. As often happens, a prime example of this is when the investigation and fact finding take on a life of thier own and become structured around finding data points to reinforce a pre-exsiting ideological outlook, rather than simply obtaining noteworthy data and allowing the viewer to develop their own opinions.
BRD
The news media is grilling Scott because they know it’s an elaborate cover-up. Cheney was illegally hunting puppies and baby rabbits with a cordless power sander.. Cheney uses their pelts for beer-cozies and fuzzy thongs. It’s a hobby.
I am reminded of all the times I saw a news report of President Gerald Ford beaning a spectator with a golf ball at some celebrity golf tournament. I don’t really see anything new in the MSM behavior. They gotcha and they gotcha and they gotcha and then America gets bored so they got to go get a different Republican.
The delay in alerting the press shows that Rove must have planned the whole thing. The major networks are going to be ridiculed for this for years to come. Remember, they still think they have credibility.
tw: cost
I’m not following your dichotomy of why from the rest. Even of the rest, being a mere conduit isn’t enough. That also takes active finding of the truth.
– Only if you’re obsessively paranoid like the typical moonbat, where you just absolutely have to find the Conservative boogyman under every bed…..
Guys, don’t you see where this is going?
This is the beginning of Cheney’s Presidential run!
Cheney in ‘08
“Like Bird shot in the Face!!!!”
Just you wait – within 3 months Hillary will shoot someone, too.
Possibly Bill
Actus, McClellan treats the press like children because they act like children.
(Considering they’re overwhelmingly Democrat, that’s not really that surprising.)
How does he treat the public?
Billboard’s album chart (the Billboard 200) has never been based on “airplay.” It has always been based on sales.
For decades, the chart was compiled from weekly reports provided by retailers across the country. In March 1991, Billboard switched to data provided by SoundScan, which tracked sales using point-of-purchase technology.
The most immediate and dramatic effect was the deluge of country music that suddenly appeared on the charts, thus revealing that it had been significantly underrepresented there.
Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was released in fall 1991—half a year after the Billboard switch—and debuted at No. 144. It took four more months to reach No. 1.
For its part, Soundgarden was not “then hunted down (and) cultivated.” The major label A&M had signed the band in 1989. Soundgarden released two albums on A&M, both solid sellers, before “Nevermind” even landed in the pressing plants.
Young audiences have been the pop industry’s target for ages. The 1990s saw the arrival of the biggest teen/tween generation in American history—the children of the boomers. The market reacted accordingly.
The methods used by a magazine to compile public chart rankings had nothing to do with any of the phenomena you’ve described.
actus, is there a reason that Scott McClellan should have a statement to make about this accident?
As for your, “That’s why its important for the press to be told of things,” did you hear how the Corpus Christi reporter got the story? Cheney’s host called the paper. She was told of it. (She was practically giddy about it: she went on and on at some length about how of course she’d never had to call the White House before – it was obviously a big deal for her, as a small-town reporter. It was actually pretty cute.) You really believe that reporters are such a delicate breed that they should be “told of things” rather than going out and doing some digging? Hell, I can be “told of things” and write a decent few paragraphs about them; seems to me a reporter ought to be glued to her police scanner, developing relationships at City Hall, trolling the obits and hitting the emergency rooms, looking for stories – not waiting to be “told of” them.
TW: cut to commercial
More disingenuous response from actus meant to steer the discussion off course. I never said the media needed to be simply a conduit. In fact, I’m for an adversarial media that is forthcoming about its advocacy.
Be that as it may, however (and it is a debatable proposition about whether or not such a market approach to news is a good idea or not), what I actually wrote was this:
I bolded the important part there, actus.
And you can tie it back to the bit earlier in the piece where I write: ”…but the point of this partcular post is to highlight how the majority of our mainstream media has become so self-important and self-referential that they now official consider themselves actors in stories rather than simpy conduits of stories (there is a time and place for both, I should think, but in general, they should be sticking to the latter so long as they are clinging to the pretense of “objectivity” and “neutrality”—and even “reporting,” rather than narrating) and “neutralityâ€Ââ€â€and even “reporting,†rather than narrating).”
My position is clear. Your attempt to muddy it simply confirms this last bit from my piece:
Saturday I wrote of how the framing of a particular story will drive public perception, and thatâ€â€consequentlyâ€â€when the spotlighting of such framing is removed, the story will evolve into its natural form. When I wrote this, I never thought it a controversial statement, but one of my progressive commenters took issue even with that bland assertionâ€â€suggesting to me that we have truly reached a point in contemporary political discourse where, from those at certain points on the political spectrum, some every single assertion is to be perfunctorily challenged as a way to forestall debate, and make the exchange of meaningful ideas glacial if not impossible.</blockquote>If it’s not clear, I was talking about your behavior in that thread, actus.
I will ignore your media criticism here, and go right for the capillaries: Things center “on,” not “around.” That defies physics, not just English.
Fa La (et al.)
Ooops. My suck.
Thanks for the actual information.
I guess I got wrapped up in a “narrative structure” there.
Cheers!
BRD
Wonder when the MSM will get around to commenting on this?
Fa (La),
Looking back, I kind of alwas thought Louder than Love and Ultramega OK were much better Soundgarden. I didn’t really have much use for Badmotorfinger, or anything since. Then again, I didn’t have a whole lot of use PearlJam. A lot of the SubPop and AmRep stuff I thought was quite good (for a while).
As far as I was thinking about the marketing to the wee tinies, I was rather under the impression that the median age marketed to started dropping remarkably post-1990. Although that may have as much to do with the growth of College Radio as anything else.
It does seem to me (and I welcome your comments) that there was a big shift relating to AOR starting about 1987 or so. Thoughts?
BRD
I mean honestly… what is the big deal anyway? It’s not like he claimed that he invented the internet, or spelled potato with an e or something really big.
Surprise. They’re as predictable as they are wrong-headed.
Daniel Rubin —
See here. Or just read the email I sent you.
He is the president’s press secretary. He didn’t have a straight answer for when the president found out, for example.
Sure they ought to dig. Ask away at Scottie. But I don’t think its too much to expect that this be released by the VP. Also, knowing reporters, they also get mad when they have to find out about stories from reading the papers. The VP shoots somebody, they want to know about it, and from the VP’s staff, not some texas landowner
But the press doesn’t have a pretense of being conduits. Being conduits is a bad thing. They know that. If anything their pretense is of “getting the story.” When they are at best being conduits.
In the following, your tags are all messed.
When you tell me that we are spoon fed one narrative, then we are going to be pretty glacial and unmeaningfull untill you forget that sort of crap. When you tell me that the barrier to competence in Iraq is that its being reported on, then I have to take some issue with it too, because forgetting about things doesn’t make them get better.
As for what this means for your fantasies of where we are in the political discourse, I’m afraid there’s not much to be done for that.
It wasn’t clear because it seemed pretty obvious that you were wrong. But hey, I come here to get called gay in your threads. And that’s where the discourse is.
Mainstream media:
Can’t bother to report on Swift Boat allegations or follow up on the claims
Doesn’t have the balls to publish the Mohammed cartoons
Will publish reports based on one anonymous source, as long as it makes the President look bad
Is pissed off it wasn’t immediately in the loop on this trivial incident.
My memo to CNN–publish the cartoons, then I’ll give a flying fuck about what you are outraged over
I was reading some of the press coverage of this, and it dawned on me: the majority of the Washington press corps does not hunt, nor do they know anyone that does. They simply have no frame of reference for it. Their reaction to this story is beyond ridiculous.
The real story here is an illustration of the chasm between the judgement of the average White House reporter and the rest of the country. We don’t live in their world, and they don’t live in ours.
Why do we pay attention to them?
– Now thats just wrong actus. I never called you gay. Gays can generally express themselves clearly, and understand others writings without endlessly expanding to obfuscate. At least the ones I know can. So I’m not ever going to call you gay. Badly confused at best, willfully ignorant – maybe. Not gay.
I’m sure there are other places you can go to be called gay, more loudly and frequently, but I’m unsure of where this compulsion comes from in the first place.
Isn’t it obvious? This is another Rovian plot.
And the idiot press corps fell for it.
Once again, Karl gets the liberals wusses to drop any facade of manhood and demonstrate they don’t know the very first things about guns or hunting.
The poll numbers must have been slipping in the red states, so Karl figured it was time for the left to step in it again and bring the voters back on the reservation with another bracing glimpse into the mind of the left-wing weenie.
Mission accomplished, Karl. Mission accomplished.
What? No jokes yet about “Texas Lawyer Takes Load in Face from Cheney’s Big Gun”?
Fags.
Jeff, I know what a big O’Reilly fan you are </sarcasm>. I just happened to be a captive audience for a few minutes to a segment of his radio show this morning, and he made exactly the same point you make in the last two paragraphs of your piece. Could it really be just coincidental?
No word on how many they bagged? Quail, I mean.
I come here to get called gay in your threads
You put on Jeff’s clothing to be called gay?
What in gods name are you talking about?
What do you mean what am I talking about?
Actus,
It was, as I recall, the V-guy whose name was attached to the “gay” commentary, not BBH.
BRD
Impossible.
The “structural” problems you keep highlighting are either perfect enablements of or shameful rationalizations for the wholesale replacement of discourse with bullyingâ€â€an act now being played out on the world stage in cartoon form (of course).
Funny that Slartibartfast’s post is above mine (as of typing), because the perfectly predictable extended death of Obsidian Wings is a great example of the phenomenon (as Sebastian there used to try to explain, but eventually he just gave up, because that abyss isn’t made to be talked shut).
You can say what you think and hope it’s received, stack your rhetorical brick in a possible future wall of dissent (call it the “democracy to come,” just to be a dick), but you can’t have an argument. There’s no such thing. You know this. How many times have you FAILED?
There’s bullshit, there’s evasion, there’s the time-sink of tiny corrections, the farce of settling definitions, but eventually all that’s revealed is prejudiceâ€â€and always, always re: class, race, and sex from the lefties, which seeming (but false) irony they’re mostly trained better than to “deconstruct.”
Impossible.
– Oh great. Now see what you’ve done actus. You dress up in Jeffs clothes, object to not being called gay often enough, and now the whole page is in italized/bold….
– They told you not to try to find your easy button with Jeffs easy button….Liberals….they never listen….
Oh, the poor babies! They were scooped!
Oh, and let me point out that the rest of us get our news from the press. Reporters aren’t exactly gonna win brownie points for thinking they’re better than the rest of us.
It really comes down to this: The left is upset because their mouthpieces weren’t the first ones informed. Instead, a local (aka “nobody”) reporter got the news first. So the Mouths of the Left didn’t get first bite—their priviledges have been violated. And they’re gonna do their best to punish the people who did it.
Watch—the press will focus on “why weren’t we told”, ignoring that the press was told, just not the Washington elites.
It is their job to be better than us at getting news.
I think it comes down to a pretty big national story and the only release was by a private citizen to a local paper. Something’s funny here, and you gotta ask why that was the way they did it.
Foxnews was at the press conference trying to sort this stuff out too.
and what made BBH think I was talking about him? and then tell me what his weird views on gays are?
So what are you going to do about it?
Answer: nothing. There’s nothing you can do. You’ve squandered all your sanctions.
Aside from details (criminal “errors” resulting from hurry vs. criminal “delay” from not hurrying) the treatment this story is getting is the same as the treatment it would have gotten if announced formally yesterday, and the same as every other story from the White House “press corps” and the news media in general. That’s because there’s only one story, and only one treatment of it, and it keeps getting repeated. If the Press were somehow made to notice that the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West, the headlines would be GLARE IN THE EYES OF VIRGINIA COMMUTERS CAUSES ACCIDENTS AND DISCREDITS THE COUNTRY, THEREFORE GEORGE BUSH MUST BE IMPEACHED!
So what, exactly, is the Administration’s percentage in timely reportage? Nada, zero, zip. The story will get the same play by the same players whether it comes out immediately or in six months; the “spin” will be the same, the indignance of the talking heads will be the same, the accusations of vileness will be the same. What do they get by playing it straight? –nothing. So why should they bother?
There is no penalty for getting it wrong that isn’t also imposed for getting it right. That’s the same thing as no penalty at all. The Press no longer has any lever or sanction against the Administration. They’ve used it all up on crap like this.
It’s dangerous. If Bush and Cheney borrowed M4s from the Marines, went down to the south gate of the White House, and started potshotting tourists on the Mall, or if Bush invaded France or sold Massachusetts to the Gray aliens for $5 and a flying car, the reaction (at least, the reaction of everyone whose homepage isn’t Moulitsas) to the breathless excitement on teevee would approximate “Shit, what are those assholes raising hell about NOW?”—where “those assholes” = “the reporters”. (That’s pretty much the coffee-shop summary of this one, around here.)
There is effectively nothing bad the Press can say about the Administration, because they’ve already said it, repeatedly and at the top of their lungs, with no intervening respite. If a 1% cut in the increase in Social Security payouts gets the same treatment as nuking Havana would, the end of the world is gonna get short shrift.
Regards,
Ric
I didn’t neccessarily think you were talking about me actout. I was giving you back some of the miles of endless disembling you’ve unleased on the rest of the people that come here seeking an honest discourse on various issues. You ask a question, an answer is given, and then you foganize with another question. Its a bore and a waste of everyones time. Just so you’ll know.
– Now feel free to ask yet another question sport.
Why would they bother issuing a statement to the press pool when the pool can just read the corpus christy newspapers? That’s what the press was asking scottie today. And scottie handled it so well: “The first priority is health … we worked with mrs armstrong… details are coming in….”
Nah. you just said:
Thats it.
And they failed. Get over it.
ah, but source/reporter relationships aren’t like that. Specially not when your source does something this whack, like try to convince you that the plan all along was to clam up and have Ole Mrs. Armstrong notify the nation.
Ah. but that’s not how the source/reporter relationship works. Specially when they try do something as whack as as having ole mrs. armstrong be the only one that notified the national media. By calling a local paper.
</i></b>What’s up with the tags?
The press corps knows that appeasement works. If they didn’t keep on asking such tough questions—like “don’t you immediately realize the VP has shot someone?”—they’d get more immediate statents that say: The VP has shot someone.
I’m still not so sure it was quite the master plan to have mrs. armstrong be the point woman on this. But if the plan was to make the press corps be more appeasing, it looks like a failure.
Haven’t you figured it out yet? I saw that the first time I ever watched a news conference he presided over, long ago.
Scott McClellan doesn’t give a damn what he says to the Press. Why should he? He knows damned well what every other adult in the United States knows, viz., that regardless of what he says the Press Corps will spin it into accusations of vileness. I’ll bet he doesn’t even make real attempts at preparation, just tosses the briefing papers into File 13 and goes out and wings it. After all, the few times what he actually said got reported, as opposed to some reporter’s interpretation of what he would have said if he were saying what he surely (according to the Narrative) must have meant, have been obvious screwups, and the reporters in question have been punished for it.
Bush and the other senior officials mostly handle it by not saying much unless the venue is such that a reasonably large number of people hear the whole thing. They know that many issues are too complex to be reduced to units small enough for journalists to handle (that is, no word over three syllables, no sentence over ten words, no dependent clauses whatever) especially when the editor is hostile, so they’re better off saying nothing at all and letting the “reporters” make it up from the whole cloth—which they will.
There’s an H. Beam Piper story, “Naudsonce”, in which first-contact explorers recite nonsense to emphasize to newly met aliens that the languages don’t match. “Scottie” could recite The Shooting of Dan McJabberwock, and the NYT would duly report that he was evasive and incomplete in his presentation on [current hot-button issue], and supply quotes to support that. Since the “reporters” are going to print whatever the voices in their heads say anyway, McClellan can say whatever he wants, and does.
Regards,
Ric
– The Royal Amerikan Press is sinking slowly in its own Leftist cesspool. Tantrums and chest beating outrage will be de’ rigor from here on out. The noise will just get louder as the panic on the left manifests ever greater toward to election time. They can’t tell America their party plan because its all Socialism all the time, which gets kicked to the curb everytime they’ve tried it, so the hatchet-job journalism will countinue unabated since its all they’ve got. When its all over, more career bodies will litter the landscape, but what the hell its all for the “cause”.
Did you see the questions today? They weren’t that complicated. And scottie did come quite prepared with a few reliables.
Wow.
Ric,
Your analysis(which I agree with) reminds me of where the islamofascists are going. When muslims get offended by piglet, and get offended by a swirl on a Burgerking icecream, and get offended by a cartoon, even a sensitive, long suffering, pc type will eventually say “screw it”, and laugh at something like this… http://www.glumbert.com/media/rave.html
Be vewwwy quiet…
we’re hunting headwines, heheheheheheh….
Don’t you mean “self-reverential”?
TW: run. As in, why didn’t Whittington?
– Well he did benjamin – But as lawyers are want to do it was in the wrong direction….
Benjamin and BBH,
You touch, tangentially, on one of the more ironic aspects of all this.
Wittingdon made a mistake. Cheney didn’t notice or react quickly enough, and the result was something that could have been quite tragic. I don’t have any problem with ragging on Cheney—it’s a situation simply made for snarky comment, a Bugs Bunny cartoon come to life—but there could also be a positive aspect.
Wouldn’t this be a marvelous springboard for a serious discussion of hunting safety? Lots of people hunt, and despite safety courses many of them don’t really know the safe procedures, the proper way to approach someone who’s setting up to take a shot, the proper way to let others know you’re setting up, any number of things. Wittingdon violated a safety zone and got peppered with birdshot. I’ve been peppered with birdshot; it stings to beat Hell, but it’s really only dangerous if the eyes are threatened. Situations that are clearly dangerous but don’t descend all the way into tragedy make great case studies.
As somebody upthread pointed out, it’s hopeless to expect the national media to have any foggiest notion of this issue. But have you seen any mention of it from that aspect on the gunbloggers’ sites, or elsewhere? I haven’t, but then I don’t visit that quadrant of the blogosphere much. Maybe I ought to go b*h at du Toit.
Regards,
Ric
FDR had polio and the press never talked about it. JFK had dibilitating disease and back pain- not to mention a drug dependency- and the press never talked about it. Because it wasn’t considered to be part of their jobs, but instead part of their lives.
Sure, when I first got the newsupdate email about Cheney, the headline was gaspworthy. VP Cheney shoots man, it said.
But part of what made it so shocking was that I could not imagine the circumstances under which such a thing might happen. The POTUS and VPOTUS’s lives are so managed these days, there is no part of it that is not deemed newsworthy. The President has a spotless colon! The President fell while biking!
When did we get to the point that we own so much of their lives? This summer, while Bush got blasted for doing his job in Texas rather than at the White House, the British Press allowed Tony Blair the luxury of a vacation at an UNKNOWN location. A carribbean island as it turns out, but just imagine that. Imagine a US President getting to go on vacation without the entire US Press corps following him around. Imagine a US President taking a vacation outside the US.
What happened with Dick Cheney is interesting, and it is a story, but is it really news? Is there no part of his life that is just his- his moment to deal with the friend that he shot, the horror of it, the embarrassment? It doesn’t involve his job or the country at all, and the press not getting the story for 24 hours didn’t either.
This is a good idea for a hunting safety. Wasn’t the guy behind Cheney? I’ve been around guns and had some gun experience. Being behind a shooter is a good spot no?
Freerepublic threads were critical of the VP, not so much the victim.
When Dubya gets interviewed he doesn’t get asked about what its like to be sober. Same thing.
what?
Q: What difference does it make to the public whether news is leaked to the press by Scott McClellan or some guy in Texas?
A: None.
Q: So why do reporters care so much?
A: If you’re a reporter who gets to be famous because you sit in this room listening to Scott McClellan, it makes a big difference.
Q: OK, why do leftists think there is a conspiracy here?
A: They’re leftists.
Q: Could delaying the story for a day possibly help Bush?
A: Yes. Originally, it was a fatal accident but Rove revived the victim using Voodoo, turning it into a non-fatal accident before the story could reach the press. Hence the secrecy.
Q: Is it a problem that the NYT sat on the NSA story for a whole year, not just one day?
A: No. Voodoo couldn’t have helped Bush in that case.
Q: So Bush can’t be blamed for that?
A: Of course he can. Don’t be silly.
Who cares? The WHPC is a pack of brainless leeches. Watching a local paper scoop them is hilarious.
Watching them try to turn their being scooped into a scandal for someone else is offensive.
To me the interest is that the VP shooting someone is a scoop, as opposed to a general release. Were they really planning on not telling? Who else has the VP shot?
I dunno, but whoever it is, he obviously thinks it’s none of your business, since he hasn’t told anybody that he was shot by the VP. And we should probably respect his point of view. After all, the poor guy was shot.
I don’t think that’s the attitude that our laws take to shootings. I’d think that shootings have to be reported.
Is this a trial baloon that’s seriously being floated on the right? The VP can shoot someone and if that person doesn’t want to it stays hush-hush? Weird.
I’m pretty sure most states require hospitals to report gunshot wounds to the police.
Not to the press.
And police reports go to the press.
Okaaaay….
So since Whittington is in the hospital, either the news of the shooting was automatically going to reach the press, making the charge of a cover-up ridiculous, or you have some evidence that you don’t want to share which shows that the administration was pressuring the hospital to break the law.
Which is it?
Wow. I read as much of this thread as I could, and you know what’s missing? The fact that the shooting incident was first handled by the Parks and Wildlife Department and that Cheney wasn’t interviewed by police until 14 hours after the incident.
You guys really have to get off the White House Press Corps. It’s making you myopic.