Salon's Joe Conason Must Read: "A Press Coverup"

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/06/17/dsm_press/print.html

A press coverup

Leave it to the Beltway herd, with their special brand of arrogance, to insist that the Downing Street memo wasn't news.

By Joe Conason

<>Mooing in plaintive chorus, the Beltway herd insists that the July 23, 2002, memo wasn't news -- which would be true if the absence of news were defined only by their refusal to report it. They tell us the memo wasn't news because everybody understood that George W. Bush had decided to wage war many months before the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. The memo wasn't news because anyone who didn't comprehend that reality back then has come to realize the unhappy facts during the three ensuing years. The memo wasn't news because Americans already knew that the Bush administration was "fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy," rather than making policy that reflected the intelligence and the facts about Iraq.

<>How foolish and how sad that all these distinguished journalists prefer to transform this scandal into a debate about their own underachieving performance, rather than redeem mainstream journalism by advancing an important story that they should have pursued from the beginning. This is a moment when the mainstream press could again demonstrate to a skeptical public why we need journalists. Instead they are proving once more that their first priority is to cover their own behinds.

<>A classified document recording deliberations by the highest officials of our most important ally over the decision to wage war is always news. A document that shows those officials believed the justification for war was "thin" and that the intelligence was being "fixed" is always news. A document that indicates the president was misleading the world about his determination to wage war only as a last resort is always news.

And when such a document is leaked, whatever editors, reporters and producers may think "everyone" already knows or believes about its contents emphatically does not affect whether that piece of paper is news. The journalists' job is to determine whether it is authentic and then to probe into its circumstances and meaning. There are many questions still to be answered about the Downing Street memo, but the nation's most prominent journalists still aren't asking them.

more..worth reading in its entirety.

[kittenpants]

1. thank you salon! good article & thanks for posting it.

[gulliver]

2. "why we need journalists"

I love the way Conason tied this to journalists keeping their jobs. That's a good point. Unfortunately, corporate journalism doesn't provide what people "need." It just sells what they will buy.

[AndyTiedye]

9. They'll Keep Pushing Rethug Talking Points Even if NOBODY Buys Them

If it were really about what people want to see, they would be running
with all these scandals every night on the news, and ** would probably
have been impeached and the debate would be whether to try him here or
send him to the Hague.

We take heart when someone in the Big Media takes a small step off the
reservation, but their boss ALWAYS gets a phone call from Karl Rove,
and that's the end of any trouble for the regime from that quarter.

The hearings showed that there are those in DC who still care, and that
is very heartening, but the fact is we are reduced to having such hearings
in the Capital basement, and trying to watch them on CSPAN (good luck
figuring out their programming schedule!).

[BlueWolff]

3. A GREAT ARTICLE

Conason is a great journalist. He really has a wonderful way with words. He also really slaps those REPUGS whenever they lie !

[Scout1071]

4. Excellent article.

Kick!

[WhollyHeretic]

5. Great Article!

I have no use for the MSM anymore. It's all a joke. I pretty much stopped watching any cable news after election day ('cept The Daily Show) I get my news online where I can get actual news stories instead of newsatainment crap.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. During the Conyers hearings

Ray McGovern held up a newspaper that he said was doing the real job of reporting. It had published a print out of the memo in it's original form from what I could see of it. He said it was a "start up" newspaper. I cannot remember the name of it--it was "Washington" something. Did anyone here catch the name of that start up newspaper?

Telling journalists to "do their job" is already old. How many times have we been exhorted to tell the media to "do their job"? They are lemmings. Or they fear George Bush. Or both. Or they have no idea what "doing their job" means because they don't know what their job is. Or they don't care about their complicity in the war crime murders of thousands of people plus all of our troops sent to kill and be killed. They are complicit for not reporting truth-as are many, many others. They are continuing to be complicit by sloughing off, again, on this shallow reporting of this issue, by offering up flimsy excuses, as if a human life is so easily disposed of if it means protecting their own job.

Further, if everyone knew, how does that explain the vote in congress to give George the go ahead to kill, maim and murder at will, without oversight? Dummies all for not knowing?

Feh

[flpoljunkie]

10. I was trying to remember it, too. Your mentioning of it jogged my memory.

It's The Washington Spark. Here is the web address: http://washingtonspark.org

It's an alternative weekly DC newspaper. Am going to check it out right now.

It appears to be available only in pdf form.

[realFedUp]

7. we love a cuppa Joe. nt

[gratuitous]

8. Conason belts one over the fence and out of the park

"Mooing in plaintive chorus" describes it perfectly. And the most bovine seem to be so many of the certified "Good Guys" who go plowing through moutainous haystacks of their obedient reporting to find, somewhere down around paragraph 53, a glancing reference to how "some people say" that the headlong rush to war seems to be based on some kind of, you know, shaky or suspect conclusions that overstate, a little bit, what the intelligence is reporting.

This obscure sentence, pulled out of a huge slough of verbiage extolling George W. Bush's greatness, manliness and steely-eyed resolve, is brought out and brandished as if to prove that they "knew all along" that the case was being overstated, and that the substance of July 23, 2002 memo is "old news" that simply everyone who was really paying attention has long been aware of.

Perhaps the only thing more nauseating than the media ass-covering is the incredibly tragic results that inevitably followed. Wouldn't it be nice if the media quit being so preoccupied with justifying their own failures and instead decided to get after the people who lied to them about so much for so long?

[Nikki Stone 1]

11. Recommended

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