Daily Archives: Thursday, February 12, 2009

Katherine Hall Jamieson’s “Echo Chamber” (Annenburg) details the relationship between the WSJ editorial page, talk radio (mainly Limbaugh) and Fox as mutually-supporting nodes of conservative propaganda. 

This morning, Glenn Greenwald notes another in a long, long list of outright falsehoods that the editorial page, in its zest to forward a rightwing (mis)understanding of political matters, regularly sends out into the polity with the clear intention that citizens will be made less accurately informed.  Made stupider.

The President [in his press conference] was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out. . . .

We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.

Strangely, many reporters laughed at this remarkable joke, which had the additional benefit of being true.

In reality, that is, if the WSJ had any intention at all of being honest with readers, they would have said something quite different:

Ari Fleischer, Tuesday night, The Bill O’Reilly Show:

O’REILLY: Look, [Obama] had those guys written down, who he was going to call on. Now, in other press conferences, they’d just look around and go: “this one, that one, this one” – correct?

FLEISCHER: Well, George Bush never did that. . . . Writing it down gives the President more control.

O’REILLY: OK, so George Bush came in with a list of guys he was going to call on?

FLEISCHER: Yes, I used to prepare it for him. I would give him a grid, show him where every reporter is seated. And there are some reporters, you know, in that briefing room, you can imagine, Bill, you get a lot of dot coms and other oddballs who come in there. They’re screened.

O’REILLY: Like the Huffington Post. Now it gets called on.

FLEISCHER: And I used to seat them all in one section. I would call it “Siberia.” And I told the President, “Don’t call on Siberia.”

Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs:

At one point while making his way through the press questioners, Bush awkwardly referred to a list of reporters whom he was instructed to call on. “This is scripted,” he joked. The press laughed. But Bush meant it was scripted, literally. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later admitted he compiled Bush’s cheat sheet, which made sure he did not call on reporters from some prominent outlets like Time, Newsweek, USA Today, or the Washington Post.

Michael Crowley, The New York Observer:

In fact, the [] only moment of candor [of the March 6, 2003 Press Conference] may have come when Mr. Bush admitted during the conference that he was calling on reporters according to his pre-arranged list of names, which his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, later copped to preparing.

“This is scripted,” Mr. Bush joked.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/12/wsj/