On CNN's Anderson Cooper last night, the discussion centered on Scott McClellan's new book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. In the book McClellan accuses the media of dropping the ball in the run up to the Iraq War. This has caused somewhat of a defensive reaction from those in the media. Here's Charlie "The crowd's turning on me" Gibson:
I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System [group giggles]. I think the questions were asked. . . . 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.
Now Charlie Gibson works for ABC News and during the time of the run up to the war, he was a host of Good Morning America. Guess who else was also on Good Morning America during this time?
CNN's Jessica Yellin was a White House Reporter for Good Morning America on ABC. And she seems to kind of contradict what Gibson says. During Anderson Cooper last night flatly says that the executives at ABC pushed her to write positive stories on the Bush Administration and edited her stories if they were too critical. Here's the video from Politico
Choice quotes:
"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings," Yellin said.
And
"They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical, and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes, that was my experience."
Glen Greenwald has a great post on this, saying:
http://www.salon.com/...
Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda.
This is why I read blogs. Srsly.