The press gives Bush a free ride on his lies

[hobbes159]

By Robert Kuttner, 7/16/2003.

I'M GLAD THAT the press is finally making an issue of President Bush's knowing use of a faked intelligence report on Iraq's supposed nuclear weapons program. But most of the press keeps missing the behind or who actually benefits from the tax cuts or what kind of drug coverage the administration's Medicare amendments will really provide or how the Bush Clear Skies Act actually degrades clean-air standards, the press has given the administration an astonishingly free ride.

<snip>

The op-ed pages are intended for the expression of opinion. But in the Bush era, much of the reporting and analysis that should be Page 1 news are treated as if they were mere opinion.

Normally the press is not reluctant to challenge the lies of a president. The press hardly shrank from this challenge in the Vietnam and Watergate eras. And much of the press, overzealously, made a crusade of the Whitewater real estate affair, virtually all of which turned out to be a phony. Poor Al Gore got toasted for minor exaggerations.

But Bush gets a free pass time after time. The press holds back partly because of America's vulnerability to terrorism, which Bush's handlers exploit shamelessly. The administration is also very effective at pressuring and isolating reporters who criticize Bush, so working reporters bend over backwards to play fair. And the administration benefits from a stage-managed right-wing media machine that has no counterpart on the liberal left.




http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/197/oped/The_press_gives_Bush_a_free_ride_on_his_lies+.shtml

[clar]

1. Thank heaven

the spell has been broken. The free ride is over.

[Kolesar]

2. We still have a monumental fight ahead of us

The Bush criminal junta is going to try to bury this story even yet.

[priller]

5. Not sure that's true just yet

Listening to cable news this morning, every single story about Tenet's upcoming "grilling" from congressmen today included the line, "Tenet has accepted the blame for the erroneous uranium claims..." when the reality is not so simple.

And not a word over Bush's "Saddam wouldn't let inspectors in" blatant lie.

[papau]

3. It's a long way from the Boston Globe to the Chi Tribune

Before the 2000 election the Globe broke the story of AWOL's year of desertion in time of war and the official punishment for that crime of a 6 month extension of his required period of enlistment.

No one else picked it up (I believe google returns about 40 stories nationwide - compared to about 1000 on the brown color of Gore's suit one day and how this was wrong in some way -made Gore a liar(?) about the environment). Not that there is a right wing bias in the US Media.

[DrBB]

4. Great article, BAD typo in that first sentence

Looks like the crucial clause got lopped off after "missing the behind..." Hope they got it right in the print edition.

[Nobody]

6. Not to mention

that despite the free ride Bush has been getting and the free ride his lapdogs have been getting, my local paper's op-ed pages are still full of whining conservatives: "How DARE the liberal press print these awful lies about Bush lying about WMDs? Wahhh! Waaaahhhh!"