The unstopable machine (Gannon, "robotic" Scotti Mc, & illegitimate press)

[Up2Late]

This is from an Awesome Blog page, reprinted at: <http://www.freepress.net/news/article.php?id=6935> visit both, for lots of great links, to Gannon, etc.:evilgrin:

February 25, 2005
From Media Citizen, <http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/>
By Timothy Karr

Rosen chimes in on the propaganda machine. He also plugs MediaCitizen for having exposed Gannon’s White House maneuvers.

Salient points:

Rosen: “There’s a difference between going around the press in an effort to avoid troublesome questions, and trying to de-unseat the idea that these people who call themselves ‘journalists’ have a legitimate role to play in politics. Ashcroft was out to unseat that idea about the traditional press. He wanted it out of the picture.”

Froomkin: “Even more of a charade these days are the daily briefings held by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose robotic adherence to repeating the predetermined messages of the day — no matter what questions come his way — has driven some correspondents to despair.”

Hertzberg: “What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years—real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment—have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won’t be because the scandals aren’t there. It’ll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key.”
(clip)

Rosen: “An illegitimate press demands not only national scorn but practical replacement. It is in this sense that ‘Jeff Gannon’ deserved his press pass, Armstrong Williams deserved his $240,000, and Ketchum public relations deserved $97 million of taxpayer money to help the Bush Administration communicate the message. (My sense is that the big uncovered facts in this scandal are to be found there, in the $97 million pot of post-press money that went to Ketchum, a PR firm willing to bend the rules, and help create a replacement for real journalism.”

[havocmom]

1. Don't suppose anybody can bring food into the press breifing.

Sure would be fun to see a bunch of them whip out corn dogs and start gnawing when Snotty Scotty comes into the room.

[Up2Late]

2. or just bring in a giant magnet, to see if we could scramble...

...robot Scotti's memory banks:evilgrin: