zorven
12,000 Suns
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What do you think?
edit: Is this an example of media bias?
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BUSH SEEKS OUT MEDIA PATSIES BEYOND THE BELTWAY
By Deborah Mathis
Tribune Media Services
WASHINGTON - At least once a week for the past couple of months, members of Congress have been calling news conferences or offering "media availabilities" about a recent trip to Iraq. These are billed as fact-finding missions in light of the Bush administration's $87 billion supplemental funding request for security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't know how many such junkets there have been, but there have been many, which should not suggest that there have been many versions of the story the representatives and senators have to tell.
In a nutshell, a typical report goes something like this: Deprivation is rampant in Iraq. But so is gratitude toward Americans. Rebels and renegades still pose a serious, lurking threat. But there is tremendous progress to be noted. Electricity and potable water are still in short supply in some areas. But the kids are back in school, the hospitals are running and, bit by bit, democracy is taking hold in Mesopotamia.
What variation there is on this theme is only on the margins. It has to do with emphasis. Those who find the administration's request patently excessive tend to focus on the bad news. Those who are inclined to rubber stamp the White House's request talk most about the improvements that have been made. But neither side tells only one side.
Despite that regular diet of double-edged reports, the Bush people insist the American public is not getting the truth about Iraq. By that, they mean there's too much bad stuff coming out. For that, they blame the national news media.
According to the president himself, reporters in the region have been putting the news through a "filter" that keeps positive developments from getting through. Since, unlike Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush can't tell the media what to do (or jail or shut them down when they displease him), Bush's solution to the alleged truth deficit is to shun national reporters and turn to the local market media.
The strategy presumes that a journalist from outside the Beltway will be so honored to get face-time with the leader of the free world, that he or she will sop up whatever Bush says. Should such a journalist challenge Bush, the question will be predictable if not cliché and therefore easily anticipated and rehearsed.
Too, the locals are bound to play the story high. Ergo, most American readers, listeners and viewers will get the "truth" from their hometown reporters, whom they trust more than the big network or big newspaper and magazine folks operating out of Washington and New York. That's the conspicuous theory.
The White House plan, launched this week, is offensive on at least two fronts. First, it attempts to make patsies out of local media and their audiences. Secondly, it implies that reporters who are on the ground in Iraq - and not just for a five- or 10-day junket ushered by an administration appointee - are dishonest about what they're seeing with their own eyes.
To my knowledge, none of the journalists abroad is guilty of fabrication. They have not concocted the stories about troop casualties. They did not gin up the suicide bombings. They do not foment the rage that occasionally erupts into violent protests. They are not imagining the rocket propelled grenades that explode against a U.S. truck or tank. They have not, did not, are not and would not.
That being said, perhaps there has not been as much coverage of the so-called good news in Iraq. I haven't seen a side-by-side comparison. But if the White House is suggesting that the national media has ignored advances made since the U.S. arrived in Iraq, that would be - in the words favored in Washington - "misleading."
So maybe the president is right. The truth isn't getting out.
© 2003 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
edit: Is this an example of media bias?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUSH SEEKS OUT MEDIA PATSIES BEYOND THE BELTWAY
By Deborah Mathis
Tribune Media Services
WASHINGTON - At least once a week for the past couple of months, members of Congress have been calling news conferences or offering "media availabilities" about a recent trip to Iraq. These are billed as fact-finding missions in light of the Bush administration's $87 billion supplemental funding request for security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't know how many such junkets there have been, but there have been many, which should not suggest that there have been many versions of the story the representatives and senators have to tell.
In a nutshell, a typical report goes something like this: Deprivation is rampant in Iraq. But so is gratitude toward Americans. Rebels and renegades still pose a serious, lurking threat. But there is tremendous progress to be noted. Electricity and potable water are still in short supply in some areas. But the kids are back in school, the hospitals are running and, bit by bit, democracy is taking hold in Mesopotamia.
What variation there is on this theme is only on the margins. It has to do with emphasis. Those who find the administration's request patently excessive tend to focus on the bad news. Those who are inclined to rubber stamp the White House's request talk most about the improvements that have been made. But neither side tells only one side.
Despite that regular diet of double-edged reports, the Bush people insist the American public is not getting the truth about Iraq. By that, they mean there's too much bad stuff coming out. For that, they blame the national news media.
According to the president himself, reporters in the region have been putting the news through a "filter" that keeps positive developments from getting through. Since, unlike Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush can't tell the media what to do (or jail or shut them down when they displease him), Bush's solution to the alleged truth deficit is to shun national reporters and turn to the local market media.
The strategy presumes that a journalist from outside the Beltway will be so honored to get face-time with the leader of the free world, that he or she will sop up whatever Bush says. Should such a journalist challenge Bush, the question will be predictable if not cliché and therefore easily anticipated and rehearsed.
Too, the locals are bound to play the story high. Ergo, most American readers, listeners and viewers will get the "truth" from their hometown reporters, whom they trust more than the big network or big newspaper and magazine folks operating out of Washington and New York. That's the conspicuous theory.
The White House plan, launched this week, is offensive on at least two fronts. First, it attempts to make patsies out of local media and their audiences. Secondly, it implies that reporters who are on the ground in Iraq - and not just for a five- or 10-day junket ushered by an administration appointee - are dishonest about what they're seeing with their own eyes.
To my knowledge, none of the journalists abroad is guilty of fabrication. They have not concocted the stories about troop casualties. They did not gin up the suicide bombings. They do not foment the rage that occasionally erupts into violent protests. They are not imagining the rocket propelled grenades that explode against a U.S. truck or tank. They have not, did not, are not and would not.
That being said, perhaps there has not been as much coverage of the so-called good news in Iraq. I haven't seen a side-by-side comparison. But if the White House is suggesting that the national media has ignored advances made since the U.S. arrived in Iraq, that would be - in the words favored in Washington - "misleading."
So maybe the president is right. The truth isn't getting out.
© 2003 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
