Our "Watchdog" Press

Glen Greenwald has a particularly good post that nails a common practice of our national press -- being sycophantic and subservient to its government sources. I have given up watching, for example, David Gregory's show at 6 PM on MSNBC because invariably at some point duing the show he will say "from my own reporting, the McCain campaign tells me..." from which he proceeds to essentially read their press releases. And he thinks this is "reporting". He doesn't even see that he is being a tool, just as Tim Russert was as Greenwald documents clearly.

There are many revealing episodes during the Bush presidency illustrating how the media functions, but there is none more revealing than the disclosures from the Lewis Libby criminal trial. Documents prepared by former Cheney Communications Director Catherine Martin (wife of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin) boasted that Tim Russert's Meet the Press was the best venue for Cheney to answer questions because he was able to "control message." Martin also testified at trial that she "suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used. It's our best format" (Dana Milbank: "Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you"). Russert himself subsequently testified that "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record" (Dan Froomkin: "That's not reporting, that's enabling. That's how you treat your friends when you're having an innocent chat, not the people you're supposed to be holding accountable").

Just think about what that meant: the single greatest source of government disinformation and corruption in America -- Dick Cheney's office -- viewed Tim Russert as the most pliable and effective instrument for disseminating their propaganda to the country. That's not media critics or rabble-bloggers saying that. That was the view of Russert which Dick Cheney's office had -- and understandably so.

I don't think these people are stupid or even ideological. They are playing their corporate game. Their management wants them to get access, not accuracy or the rational truth, so they can claim a "scoop". But what kind of a scooping is it to be a stenographer?

Kelly O'Donnell of NBC is another classic. Every time she is on air, she is passing on what someone in the McCain campaign told her, as if that is all there is to her job -- no context, no comparison to previous statements, no checking against established facts or studies, just regurgitation. Then these are the people who are promoted to the plum assignments, not the diggers and fact-checkers. It seems obvious that this type of reporting is exactly what the corporate management of the media want.