Greenwald on the "liberal media" myth
Glenn Greenwald has two pieces in Salon on the persistent myth of the "liberal" media. In the first, he notes some comments from Scott McClellan's explosive new book that portray the media as willing lapdogs of the Bush administration in its run-up to the Iraq invasion. McClellan says this about the media's complicity during the 2002-2003 White House campaign of spin and lies about Iraq:
In this case, the "liberal media" didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.
Those are Scott McClellan's words, not Greenwald's. The former White House press secretary is both lambasting the media for not doing its job and acknowledging the farcical nature of the tag "liberal."
Greenwald says this:
There are many things one could call a news media that is "very deferential" and too "frightened" to "get into an argument with [the right-wing] President" marching the country to war. "Liberal" isn't one of them.
Go read the whole post, then come back for Part 2.
Did you read it? OK, good. Now for the coup de grace: Greenwald's second piece on the subject details a self-serving, self-congratulatory appearance on the Today Show by the three competing evening network news anchors (Couric, Gibson, and Williams). Although the three talking heads were on stage together to promote some kind of telethon or fund-raiser or something, they were reluctantly steered toward talking about some of the things McClellan states in his book. Charlie Gibson of ABC had the audacity to say this about his own coverage of the run-up to the Iraq invasion:
I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials for asking questions they didn't feel comfortable with.
It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions.
Go read Greenwald's examination of how Charlie Gibson actually didn't ask those questions at all. Go see for yourself how Gibson acted as a stenographer and cheerleader for the neocons. Then ask yourself if he and his cohorts are doing their jobs. Then ask yourself if those are the hallmarks of a "liberal" media allegedly hostile to conservative causes.
Greenwald then summarizes the decay of American news media and its cowardly surrender to right-wing smear tactics:
The arc of our country and its media: from David Halberstam's confrontation with a U.S. General in Vietnam over his demands to investigate (rather than mindlessly accept) the Pentagon's war claims to Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams sitting around giggling on TV with Matt Lauer and muttering about what a great job they did in covering the administration's march to invade Iraq, when even Bush's own Press Secretary mocks them for being weak, complicit little mouthpieces for government propaganda. That damned Liberal Media.
On a host of other issues, from the erosion of civil liberties to the enshrinement of corporate welfare, the media have been all too willing to let conservative talking points pass right on through without challenge for many years, lending those talking points and policies a veneer of legitimacy they almost never deserve. Those journalistic failures by incurious and complicit minds can hardly be described as biased toward the liberal side.