Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Friday, February 09, 2007
Enabling
Via Atrios, we get this statement from Dan Froomkin on Timmeh Russerts testimony at the Libby trial:
If you're a journalist, and a very senior White House official calls you up on the phone, what do you do? Do you try to get the official to address issues of urgent concern so that you can then relate that information to the public?

Not if you're NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert.

When then-vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby called Russert on July 10, 2003, to complain that his name was being unfairly bandied about by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Russert apparently asked him nothing.

And get this: According to Russert's testimony yesterday at Libby's trial, when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record.

That's not reporting, that's enabling.
Yes, it is. Given the events over the past 10+ years and how the Washington Press Corpse has reported it, I don't know why any but a few select reporters should be believed. The term whore only begins to describe their complicity in the disasters unfolding in our country. And I don't think you can blame this one on "corporate ownership". I think these insider games have been going on for quite some time. It's just that with someone who so blatantly lies and then uses the press, like Bush, it's becoming glarringly obvious. Atrios says it well:
By essentially running administration press releases through a guy like Russert, they launders the information and give it the stamp of Truth from a news guy that people inexplicably trust.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Written at 9:47 AM by Greyhair.
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