PressThink: Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy

PressThink: Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy

Read this. Read this post from PressThink. It is fascinating, particularly the lo-o-o-ng question in an interview with a senior person at the Washington Post that never was released or published. The journalism community is finally waking up to the fact that they do not control 'the news,' nor should they.

"You wrote a book about Clinton, and you have covered junior Bush, and so you
are more than qualified to dispute my thesis in this next question, which is a
little long (but then this is PressThink.)I think the Bush years have been a
disaster for the Washington press. In my view, the White House withdrew from a
consensus understanding of how the executive branch had to deal with
journalists. It correctly guessed that if it changed the game on you, you
wouldn’t develop a new game of your own, or be able to react. I believe this
strategy is still working, too.
The old understanding, which lasted from Kennedy to Gore, was that the
White House has a right to get its message out, and the press has a right to
probe and question, and so there will always be tensions in the relationship.
There will always be spin. There will always be stonewalling. There will
always be attempts to manipulate the press.
Likewise, there will always be pack journalism. The press will always
exploit internal conflict and make juicy stories from it. Because of its
appetite for anything it regards as the “inside” story, the press will always be
vulnerable to manipulation by leak. It will always seize on miscues and call
them missteps.
But despite all this, and the struggles and complaints, the
parties would end up cooperating most of the time because presidents “need to
get their message out” (that was the phrase) and communicate with the country,
while journalists need stories, pictures, quotes, drama— news from the power
center of the world.
And so a rough balance of power existed during that
era; people could even imagine that the press had a semi-permanent or
quasi-official “place” in the political order. It was known that White Houses
tried to manage the news, which was part of governing. It was also known that
there were limits on its ability to do so.
But where, John, is it written that these limits will always be observed?
What prevents a new understanding from coming into power in the White
House, one that withdraws from the earlier consensus? In fact, there
is nothing to prevent it; and I would argue that the Bush forces have
done exactly that. They sensed that the old press system was
weakened and they changed the game on you. They knew you wouldn’t react because
to do so would look “too political.”
Other White Houses had a “line of the day” they wanted to push. None had a spokesman like Scott McClellan who, no matter what the question, will mindlessly repeat the line of the day as a way of
showing journalists that they have no rights to an answer. That isn’t “spin,”
although it may superficially look like spin. That’s shutting down the podium
and emptying out the briefing room without saying you’re doing it.
Armstrong
Williams isn’t business-as-usual, it’s changing the game. Not meet the press— be
the press! But at least the contract that paid Williams $240,000 was
undisclosed. Look at the disclosed picture: The Bush team has openly said they don’t
believe in the fourth estate role for the press. They have openly said: big
journalism is a special interest. Bush has openly denied that journalists
represent Americans’ interest in anything, including the public’s right to know.
Bush is openly hostile to questions that aren’t from friendlies.
Dick Cheney
will look into the eyes of a journalist on television and deny
saying what he’s on tape saying! And when the first tape is played on the
air, then the second, it doesn’t prompt any revision from his office. That too
suggests a new game, in which flagrant factual contradiction is not a problem,
but itself a form of cultural politics. Different game. On top of that, the
Republican party gains political traction and excites its base through the act
of discrediting journalists as the liberal media. I don’t recall the Democratic
Party developing any coalition like that. The liberal media charge is part of
the way the GOP operates today— routinely. On top of that secrecy by the
executive branch has reached levels beyond anything you have dealt with in your
career.
Aside from the coverage of weapons of mass destruction, which is
seen to have failed, my sense is that you and your colleagues think you have
handled the challenge of covering this government pretty darn well. (Correct me
if I am wrong.) The game hasn’t changed, you contend. We’re still in a
recognizable, fourth-estate, meet-the-press, rather than beat-the-press
universe. Those—like me—who accuse Bush of taking extraordinary measures to
marginalize, discredit, refute (and pollute) the press are said to be
exaggerating the cravenness of this Adminstration and ignoring the parallels and
precedents in other White Houses, including the Democratic ones.
Actually, I
may have understated the magnitude of the change Bush and company have brought
to your world, because I didn’t connect the pattern we can find in journalism to
the Bush Administration’s treatment of science,
its mistreatment of career professionals and other experts in government, and of
course its use
and misuse of intelligence. All have to be downgraded, distorted, deterred
because they’re a drag—also called a check—on executive power and the Bush
team’s freedom from fact. To offer one more example, there’s no precedent that
I’m aware of for what’s happened to public information officers
under this Bush. These are the government’s own flaks who have to be brought to
heel by the political people, who want to erode any trace of professionalism.
That’s changing the game; and to say in response, “well, there have always been
flaks, Clinton had flaks, Carter had flaks” is just pointless and dumb.
[You’ve said you believe in a] mainstream press that is detached from the
fight for power, and I would like to believe in that too. I think it’s noble. I
think it’s necessary. How can you have an independent press without that kind of
distance? But power—the executive power under Bush—hasn’t “detached” itself from
the press, John. Not at all. It is actively trying to weaken journalism, so that
it can over-ride what the newspapers say, and act like they don’t exist.
Finally, then, here are my questions for you: Do you ever worry that Bush
might have changed the game on you, and put in practice a different set of
rules? And if you don’t worry about that, why the hell not? And why shouldn’t
you guys—the Post and the press corps at large— change the game on Bush and
company?"