Arianna Huffington: Memo to the Media: Stop Enabling the White House

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Huffington Post
Dated Monday September 5

Memo to the Media: Stop Enabling the White House Blame Game
By Arianna Huffington

When it comes to managing political crises (as opposed to national ones), the Bush White House has earned a reputation as masters of damage control. And rightly so -- let’s see you get reelected after Abu Ghraib, the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” memo, no WMD, no bin Laden (dead or alive), and “Mission (Most Definitely Not) Accomplished”.

Well, according to the New York Times, Rove, Bartlett and the damage control boys are at it again, rolling out a plan to hang the post-Katrina debacle around the necks of Louisiana state and local officials… and, in the process, erase the image of a crassly incompetent administration too busy vacationing to worry about the dying in New Orleans.

Hence, today’s Presidential Visit, Take Two. Can’t you just see Rove yelling “Cut!”, hopping out of his director’s chair, pulling Bush aside, and whispering in his ear: “Okay, Mr. President, this isn’t “Armageddon” meets “The Wedding Crashers”. So this time 86 the stories about how you used to party in New Orleans, and, for heaven's sake, do not focus on the suffering of Trent Lott. And no more hugging only freshly-showered black people who look like Halle Berry -- this time you gotta get a little closer to the living-in-their-own-feces crowd. Alright…. action!”

Look, as much as I despise the way they go about it, I get it: trying to save face by deflecting blame and sliming your enemies may be ugly but it’s straight out of the Rove playbook and has proven highly effective.

What I don’t understand is why the media continue to be star players on the Bush damage control team.

Read more.

[NVMojo]

1. KICK!

[tabasco]

2. What part of the media being owned by giant war-profiteering ...

corporations does Arianna not understand?

The corporate media is simply the propaganda arm of the war profiteering corporations.

That's what she should be writing about.

Until the mass media is independently owned and operated, we will continue to hear the corporate view of events.

edit tyop (heehee)

[Spangle]

7. She is trying to get the READERS to think

People are tired of hearing "Liberal Media" BS. It's an old argument. So instead.. making them ask the WHY.

[Trevelyan]

16. The rules against monopolies of the media were crippled by

the Clinton appointed FCC Chairman Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell, the dictatorship of bush jr has been in the works for a long time By daddy bush and his sick thugs and PNAC.

Bush was brought up to be the anti-Christ. When he was running around the country they took him to an MK-ULTRA headquarters, Offutt airbase that was run by avowed satanist, Aquino for a refresher when he started freaking out after he saw the people jumping from the World Trade Center as any normal person would but after than he was able to perform the bullhorn on the rubble routine.

I feel sorry for him, he was obviously badly abused emotionally and physically by his bitch mother and pedophile and satanist father but someone needs to get him away from nuclear toys. He is a puppet and the oligarch are said to be in civil war partly on the invasion of Iran which China and Russia who have borders with Iran have said would be met with nuclear attacks on 100 US cities. Some of the oligarchy would prefer that the world not be destroyed and don't envision spending the rest of their and their children's lives in even a luxurious bunker. They would like to see the sky and ocean and not be prevented by a radioactive world and it is possible that an all out nuclear war could knock the earth off its axis. So I keep hoping that they will take Junior, Cheney and the rest of the PNAC nuts out.


I keep feeling I'm living in Dr. StrangeLove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb or On The Beach.

[susu369]

19. Clinton did appoint Powell to the FCC

but it was bu$h* who appointed him the head huncho, if I am not mistaken.

Not to take away from your post - which is excellent.

[Pewlett Hackard]

24. the BEST post I evar read

in DU. I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY (presuming you're the opposite of whatever sex I am).

[bleever]

3. "Star player on the Bush damage control team."

We've been saying it for a long time.

Now Arianna's on board, and Bob Herbert, and Keith Olbermann (a personal hero since the theft of the 2004 election), and the avalanche commences.

Position yourselves accordingly.

[democrank]

4. What I love about Arianna?

She`s not embedded.

[Triana]

5. So, let's BLAST this TO THE MEDIA...

...we've got the email addresses, right?

Send it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. And this one: They may be growing some Backbone. Encourage It.

Powerful article on pre- vs. post- Katrina media coverage.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4640022

[Captain Hilts]

6. I want to have her baby.

Damn. I just said I wanted to have Keith Olberman's baby.

[PsN2Wind]

8. Too bad, she didn't work in

that reference to "Operation Hug a Negro" a poster put up here.

[Drum]

9. Insofar as Enabling,

I'll absolutely second what what you've included here...the media has to toughen up and lose the lap-dog thing. Remember the privy little BBQs with Bush&press, Rove&press, who-knows-Who-Else&press? Makes me wonder if anyone will go on the record, or is everyone waiting till the '08 election cycle to release books instead? For the most part, deplorable.

However, I have seen a few flickers of life: a few tenacious days grilling Scotty M in WHPress briefings over Plamegate, Cindy Sheehan---the reporters were actually confrontational (or did the WH start making them buy their own lunches?) Still they are far too meek...there's some arm-twisting of some sort going on...mass hypnosis can't be so selective, can it?

Remarkably though, through the sheer density of all of these big stories coalescing around the government's long annual vacation---typically slow for news, ordinarily?---this is all on our plate at once now, and the courage and compassion I see re-emerging in some news people and organizations give me what little hope I have of our decline ever reversing. There wasn't anything governmental/militarily preventing reporters for the past week from doing their actual jobs...maybe that will refresh and inspire them. The debacle and subsequent tragedies accompanying Katrina have been bravely covered by reporters in the field, uncensored by politicians, and yes---the kicker---involving Americans, not abstract statistics elsewhere in the world (who are said by our WH to deserve their fate-at-America's-hands. Maybe the simple fact that it's right here in our own damned yard that folks are suffering. Whatever, something has turned for the press, and there is a pulse there after all. I've been very surprised this month, to say the least, and there have at least been a few glimpses of the America that I thought I knew.

Where the press&media have been witness or advocate of integrity, I applaud 'em. For the rest: quit saying you're journalists...you're just hired guns, spinners.

Let's keep on keeping them honest, and give credit where credit is due. If we speak up, they will too.


Thanks for this posting, Jack Rabbit.

[FourStarDemocrat]

10. PLUS.. the media is insane propping up Bush who's doin 40% in the polls

The people get it, the whole world gets it..that Bush is an utter miserable failure. But the media keeps cutting him slack like he's at 50% approval or above.

[LibertyorDeath]

11. Until this changes

"the media continue to be star players on the Bush damage control team."

America is Fucked

[ourbluenation]

12. Yep - governor Blanco is getting swiftboated

there's a hot place in hell for these people, a red hot burning ring of hellfire.

[LibDemAlways]

15. Hate radio is apparently spewing the

lie that "Officials in New Orleans are corrupt. Nagin and Blanco stole the money the Bush admin. gave them to shore up the levee." That was one a reichwinger told me today. Said she heard it "on the radio."

[NoQuarter]

22. Correction.

White hot.

[cboy4]

14. Yay! And to think I used to hate this woman

when her husband was running for the Republican senate seat here in my home state of California.

She's so cool now!! :kick:

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JaneGat]

21. These cowardly deflections may change minds but not the facts

If Bush's feet are never held to the fire, we'll experience "Katrina" again and again.

If the media decide to support the lies, they are willingly putting hundreds of thousands of more lives needlessly at risk - this time with full complicity. The media must sober up after the 4.5 year thrill ride they've had with Bush, and expose Rove. The facts are available to anyone on the Internet, but it would help if the lies were not reported in the first place, as in the Washington Post yesterday.

My cousin was missing in NO (rescued by sheriffs on Saturday) so I've been reading everything I could. The most disgusting thing I've seen was the pentagon's big self indulgent boo-hoo party over reporters being "too sympathetic" with the victims in NO. That was the most appalling, self-serving, infantile crap I've ever heard. This administration in incompetent through and through. Wake up, Media, and stop risking all our lives. :grr:

[leftchick]

18. It Is INSANE That They Are STILL Using Karl as a source

don't they know people have a clue as to who their "source" is??

<snip>

So here are a couple of questions: 1) Had everyone in the WaPo fact checking department gone out of town for the Labor Day weekend? I mean, c’mon, the announcement of a state of emergency isn’t exactly the kind of thing government officials tend to keep a secret. 2) Why were the Post reporters so willing to blindly accept the words of an administration official who obviously had a partisan agenda -- and to grant this official anonymity?

[PurpleChez]

20. Rock On! But "read more" where?

At Nürnburg, journalists went to the gallows for their complicity with a murderous government. Hmmm.....

[Jack Rabbit]

23. Response

Rock On! But "read more" where?

At the link in the root post.

At Nürnburg, journalists went to the gallows for their complicity with a murderous government.

In Nazi Germany, "journalists" were told what they could and couldn't say by the government. That's classical fascism. It made it very easy to sort out the culpability of certain journalists in war crimes.

What we have here is a little different. Journalists are told what they can and can't say by their employers, who may be the same people who foot the bill for Mr. Bush's political career. It's not really Bush who is in charge, but an elite cabal of those who control transnational corporations. Determining the culpability of certain journalists in war crimes or crimes against humanity is more difficult under those circumstances.

An interesting case in point is that of Judith Miller. Let's consider all that fiction about Saddam's military capability she wrote in the late 2002 and early 2003 that appeared on the front page of The New York Times and helped Bush and the neoconservatives persuade the American public that they had a real case for war against Iraq when they did not. Now, I'm absolutely convinced Bush and his lieutenants knew that they really had no case and deliberately lied; they should charged with war crimes. The question is: What is Ms. Miller's culpability? Was she simply a lazy or sloppy journalist who got information from Chalabi and went to a neoconservative in the Pentagon to confirm his story? The neoconservative was working with Chalabi in building a false case for war and was not really an independent source. Or did she have reason to know Chalabi was lying and that the neoconservative was just going to confirm anything he said? In that case she was pushing her own agenda and doing her part to mislead the country into war. If it is simply the first case, she should be fired from her job at The New York Times. If it is the second, she should be fired from her job at The New York Times and put on trial for war crimes along with Bush and his neoconservative aides.

[katty]

25. Enabling?!how about STOP MAJORLY KISSING THEIR ASSES

[Stevious]

26. Spin!

Bush interrupted his Easter vacation and flew back to Washington for one brain-damaged girl. Bush did not fly back from his vacation before the hurricane hit when his own weather service predicted 50 thousand people could die.

WASHINGTON - The Bush White House is known for its ability to remain in control of its message and image, sliding out of crises with barely a scratch. Not this time.

Despite day after day of appearances by President Bush aimed at undoing the political damage from a poor response to Hurricane Katrina, the White House has not been able to regain its footing, already shaken by the war in Iraq and a death toll exceeding 1,880.

The administration on Tuesday struggled to deflect calls for an accounting of who was responsible for a hurricane response that even Bush acknowledged was inadequate. There were increasing calls for the resignation or firing of Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I think it's clear we're in damage control now," said Norman Ornstein, political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050906/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_struggling_with_katrina