One more reason to admire Glenn Greenwald's media scrutiny:

[Gabi Hayes]

Last week I started a thread on the oh-so amicable CSPAN get-together between Tony Snow, Richard Wolffe, and some other WH correspondents from the various media...TV, radio, wires, etc.

It was a nauseating display of pandering delusion, at best.

Greenwald covered this dog and pony show in detail recently, concentrating (in the part I've read so far) on Wolffe, his outrage at bloggers' outrage at journalists, and the journalist's role as, well, of all things....JOURNALIST!

here's a snip

.....all journalists are supposed to do is ask questions of their friends -- like that great guy, Tony Snow -- and that is how they "get information." Then, they pass it along. That's it. That's their job (that echoes what Gordon told Goodman: "the way journalism works is you write what you know, and what you know at the time you try to convey as best you can").

Those who think they should actually do more than that -- as embodied by the demand of bloggers that they actually be adversarial and skeptical about the information-gathering process, and that they actually investigate and scrutinize what the Government tells them, rather than mindlessly pass it along -- is all just a lamentable by-product of how unpleasantly political and angry bloggers are. Wolffe explained what we fail to understand:

''It's not a political exercise, it's a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.''


The reality, of course, is that most media-criticizing bloggers do not want journalists to be "political advocates." They want them to do what journalists are supposed to do -- which is not, contrary to Wolffe's belief, sit around with their good, trustworthy, nice-guy friends in the White House and simply "ask questions" and "get information," but instead to scrutinize that information, treat it with doubt, investigate it before passing it along to determine whether it's true.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/21/wolffe/index.html

this is really well worth the time spent, especially reading the excerpts of the six articles Wolffe wrote in 02-03, in which he most credulously copied down the administration line in the run up to the invasion.

[Gabi Hayes]

1. Please take note, Keith, and stop using hacks like Wolffe, Milbank, and Fineman

so regularly on your show.

Why not more people like Greenwald, Eric Boehlert, or, God forbid, Robert Parry?

you're better than that, even though you're all we have in the M$M video world

[ellenfl]

2. i doubt keith makes those decisions. eom

[Gabi Hayes]

3. huh? so they FORCE his guests upon him? or he has no say who his bookers

bring on the show?

I see your point, but there's no way he doesn't have a lot of influence on who his guests are.

[Sydnie]

8. I think Keith has a bank of people he can choose from

just as Scarborough seems to have his bank (Like Buchanan who seems to be on his show every night). They are somehow attached as contributors to MSNBC through their host companies (Newsweek for example). So he might be somewhat limited on who his regulars can be because they are the ones "under contract" to the network.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. time for a run on the bank, then. did you read that stuff Wolffe wrote?

nothing short of appalling

[Gabi Hayes]

4. More from Greenwald's link, re: Wolffe

It is truly astonishing that the people who enabled the administration to spew one falsehood after the next -- and who aided and abetted the worst strategic disaster in our country's history by mindlessly passing those falsehoods along to their readers, completely failing to investigate any of it, but instead obediently validating it all with journalistic approval -- now want to sit around in the most self-satisfied way and pronounce that they are doing an absolutely "fantastic job" and complain about the vulgar masses who disrupt their tranquility by criticizing them for being insufficiently vigilant.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. MORE:

Truly, the spectacle of watching our country's leading White House journalists sitting there next to Tony Snow -- all of them oozing pomposity and self-satisfaction -- while Snow engineers the entire discussion and treats them like the friendly puppets that they are (Snow: "What do you think, Richard?" Richard: "Yeah, uh, well . . . I totally agree."), is quite difficult to endure, but is nonetheless truly revealing. How can someone who authored the above-excerpted articles, in which they disseminated to the world patent falsehoods that helped to unleash a grotesquely unnecessary and grotesquely brutal war, all on false pretenses, now parade around in public touting what a great job they have done and attack bloggers for criticizing them?

[Gabi Hayes]

6. BTW, among the 'journalists' at the dais were Chief WH Correspondent for NBC.

There many here who applaud him for his bold questioning of the pResident.

To me, it's like saying, "Hey! That shit cow doesn't smell NEARLY as bad as that two-week old pig shit over in the corner."

[Gabi Hayes]

7. Richard Wofffe on Bush, ca. 2005:

He's hands-on, detail-oriented and hates 'yes' men. The George Bush you don't know has big dreams—and is racing the clock to realize them

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6831823/site/newsweek/

this multi-page handjob, as well as other hagiography by Time and Newsweek, is discussed here (both links thanks to the Greenwald blog)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/09/15/time_newsweek/index.html