Don't know if you caught this, but Politico's Michael Calderone runs the video of Jessica Yellin breaking astounding news to CNN's Anderson Cooper: Apparently corporate media executives pressured the White House reporters to kill negative stories on Bush, especially when Bush's approval ratings were high. (I know! Unbelievable!)
(Let me know if this has already been diaried.)
What was most amusing to me, though (aside from Cooper's naivete), were the right-wing commenters on the Politico, who figured the only censorship imaginable was probably to take out Yellin's inate liberal bias and "Bush hatred":
"Where in the MSM have we EVER seen positive stories about this administration or the war?? Its just not there."
"Maybe her stories were already biased by her hatred of Bush and her editors were trying to balance the story...which she found objectionable."
Yeah, that must be it. Link and pull-outs from Yellin are below the fold.
Today's Politico:
"CNN's Yellin: Network execs killed critical White House stories" (h/t Huffingtonpost)
(Sorry, I don't know how to embed the video found at the link.) In a discussion about McClellan's confessional, Jessica Yellin provided the smoking-gun testimonial regarding corporate media's pressure to protect us from negative Bush stories on the White House beat.
"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 my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives...."
"...They would edit my pieces," Yellin said. "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."
Yellin worked at ABC News from July 2003 to August 2007. (Update #1: Commenter zenbowl says new info suggests this took place at MSNBC.) Why am I not surprised that the MSM might be a tad, er, what's the phrase... "fair and balanced"?
2nd Update: zenbowl's comment below links to a Politico update re: Yellin is referring to MSNBC, not ABC, h/t to tvnewser. Looks like Yellin will be blogging this herself soon. Thanks!