Posted on 04/13/2003 1:03:25 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began his briefing Friday by talking about "mood swings" in the media. The White House reportedly is frustrated at some reports questioning U.S. military strategy.
Some in the media are equally frustrated with what they see as a lack of hard information in Pentagon and Central Command briefings. And there is contention over who was responsible for raising public expectations for a quick war: the media or the military and the administration.
As the Iraq conflict presses on, the battle to control and shape the news back home is heating up. With the invasion's initial jolt of adrenaline wearing off, the press last week began moving toward a more traditionally adversarial role, asking harder questions about strategy. Even so, some media executives and critics were questioning whether the coverage has been hard enough.
"Did the so-called war experts get it all wrong?" CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked on air, a tone that was typical of some television coverage by week's end and a far cry from what many critics viewed as cheerleading when the U.S.-led campaign began.
As if to punctuate the shift, the Pentagon late in the week ordered the first reporter to leave Iraq, contending that Philip Smucker of the Christian Science Monitor revealed potentially harmful information about troop location in an on-air conversation with CNN.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
HELLO. Silly me, I thought the press was supposed to report the facts, show both sides, be fair and balanced.
Now I see. The press is supposed to be "adversarial".
Like it was during the Clinton administration, no doubt.
Gloat away......
Not so, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer at a Friday briefing that was almost exclusively about the question of expectations. Fleischer cited presidential speeches, including the State of the Union address, in which the difficulty of war was emphasized.
The whole game for journalism is to raise expectations high enough to assure that the actual result will disappoint. The final result must be bad news--"No news is good news," because good news doesn't grip your attention, therefore "isn't news"--isn't reported.Just as the tape of the Rodney King arrest, which in context exculpated the police at the first trial, was quickly edited down by journalists to the part that made the police look worst--and endlessly replayed to help instigate the riot which followed that first verdict.
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