Bush Launches Massive Shock & Awe Offensive... Against U.S. Media.

[im10ashus]

By Peter Daou
Update: Video of MSNBC debate on Bush and the media.

Bush Launches Massive Shock & Awe Offensive... Against U.S. Media: As the Bush administration's Iraq fiasco spirals further out of control, a new phase of the war has begun: an all-out assault on the American media for simply reporting the news. The scope and audacity of this attack is breathtaking: on cue, a bevy of administration officials and rightwing talking heads has begun taking direct aim at the press, accusing reporters of fabricating the Iraq crisis.

Media Matters chronicles the assault:

+ On March 19, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on CBS' Face the Nation and answered a question about the sagging support for the Iraq war by noting that "there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."

+ During a March 20 press gaggle, White House press secretary Scott McClellan discussed the speech Bush would give later that day in Cleveland. McClellan said that the "dramatic images that people see on the TV screens ... are much easier to put into a news clip" and told reporters that the president would address the "real progress being made toward a democratic future."

+ In his speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Bush said he understood "how some Americans have had their confidence shaken." He continued: "Others look at the violence they see each night on their television screens, and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq." Bush then talked about the town of Tal Afar, which he described as a "concrete example of progress in Iraq that most Americans do not see every day in their newspapers and on their television screens."

+ Later in the speech, Bush said: "The kind of progress that we and the Iraqi people are making in places like Tal Afar is not easy to capture in a short clip on the evening news. Footage of children playing, or shops opening, and people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an IED explosion, or the destruction of a mosque, or soldiers and civilians being killed or injured."

cont'd...

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=0c901c16-cbac-454b-9b3f-edbacee6855a

[JeffR]

1. Not so much Shock & Awe

as shuck & jive. Same old same old.

[nini]

2. Good.. maybe they turn the tables on the asshole

and report the truth again. I won't hold my breath though

[Deja Q]

3. This should be amusing. Who has more chutzpah...

the media that has no stake in things

or

the elected congressional officials who seem to know a lot more than all of us combined...

:popcorn: :beer:

[LynnTheDem]

4. Didn't help the president during Vietnam; ain't gonna help bush.

The media starts showing the FACTS & REALITY about Iraq & Afghanistan and some FACTS about BUSH, and that's gonna be all she wrote for MFer bush.

[im10ashus]

6. It would certainly be refreshing to see some facts & reality.

He is being revealed, layer by stinking layer, every time he opens his mouth about this "war" he has illegally put us in.

[janx]

5. Have the media wised up--even a little?

I wonder about their take on things.

[rzemanfl]

7. Today on CNN Headline News they showed that city in Iraq the

shrub was so proud of. They have packed the Shia into a ghetto and closed the main market, the people are pissed and when they started to complain, the news people were told to turn off their cameras. Great fucking job Dubya.

[LynnTheDem]

8. Tel Afar; where violence is spreading rapidly.

Remember when bush touted Ramadi as the "model city"??? Remember the US troops recently bombing the fuck -again- out of Ramadi?

bush is such a total MFing asshole.

[im10ashus]

9. Did you see Reliable Sources this morning?

I love Laura Logan. :loveya:

Here's a snip:

KURTZ: Thank you. Bush and Cheney essentially seem to be accusing you and your colleagues of carrying the terrorist message by reporting on so many of these attacks. What do you make of that?

LOGAN: Well, I think that's -- that is a very convenient way of looking at it. It doesn't reflect the value judgment that's implicit in that.

As a journalist, if an American soldier or an Iraqi person dies that day, you have to make a decision about how you weigh the value of reporting that news over the value of something that may be happening, say, a water plant that's being turned on that brings fresh water to 200 Iraqi people. I mean, you get accused of valuing human life in a certain way depending on how you report it.

And also, as -- I mean, what I would point out is that you can't travel around this country anymore without military protection. You can't travel without armed guards. You're not free to go every time there's a school opening or there's some reconstruction project that's being done.

We don't have the ability to go out and cover those. If they want to see a fair picture of what's happening in Iraq, then you have to first start with the security issue.

more...

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/26/rs.01.html

[leftchick]

11. she is great!

I love her smackdowns...

<snip>

LOGAN: I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

KURTZ: So what you're saying is that what we see on the "CBS Evening News" or other networks actually is only a snapshot, is only perhaps scratching the surface of the kinds of violence and difficulties that you are witnessing day after day because you can only get so much of this on the air?

LOGAN: Oh, yes. Absolutely. And, I mean, our own -- you know, our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things.

They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them?

You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.

I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country. Reconstruction funds have been diverted to cover away from reconstruction to -- they've been diverted to security.

Soldiers, their lives are occupied most of the time with security issues. Iraqi civilians' lives are taken up most of the time with security issues.

So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

[leftchick]

12. and this...

<snip>

KURTZ: I do want to point out that Laura Ingraham was in Iraq last month for eight days, and that was part of the reason for her appearance.

Lara Logan, stay with us. I want to bring...

LOGAN: For eight days.

:)

[im10ashus]

13. I loved that she got that last jab in there.

"For eight days." :rofl:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Somebody tell the frat-boy emperor that his cheerleading days are over.

[emulatorloo]

14. kick and nominating n/t