December 03, 2003
WHO WENT WHERE?:
How the White House Fooled NPR (Jeffrey A. Dvorkin/Ombudsman, December 3, 2003 , National Public Radio)
[Don] Gonyea and other journalists have said that they recognize that secrecy and deception may have been the only way to safely pull this trip to Baghdad off, but, he notes:There are legitimate questions to be raised as to whether or not this is an appropriate reason for such a deception. This was not about national security, or keeping a military operation a secret.
Ron Elving is NPR’s senior Washington editor. He agrees with Gonyea that this was a highly political and partisan event:
My own feeling is that it raises a fundamental question when the president and his staff can lie about his whereabouts. If it's supposed to be okay under special circumstances... who's to say which circumstances? This was not a matter of national security, of defending the nation or of defending the president himself. It was done to make possible a photo op. Great as PR. Sketchy as stewardship of the office. [...]
Exactly what the media was told may have gone relatively unnoticed in the United States, but a number of overseas journalists contacted me to ask how the American media could allow this to happen without a more vigorous protest.
Typical was an e-mail from Joao Baptista Natali, a reporter with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paolo:
For journalists outside the U.S., it seems that this fact was just an extra stone in a solid consensus wall that government and media have been building together after Sept. 11.
That consensus wall seems unconscionably high to many journalists, both inside and outside the United States. But many domestic commentators disagree. One opined that this "was the only way the president could fulfill a great presidential tradition (of) serving food to troops under the present circumstances, so the deception was justified."
More worrisome is that it also seems to evoke another less venerable but longstanding presidential tradition -- that of deceiving the press. NPR and other media need to make sure we won’t get fooled again.
When the Constitution refers to a free press, does it say that the subjects the media covers are required to hand them stories for free? If NPR did a lousy job covering the President, not even realizing he'd left the country, they should look at their own performance not try and shift blame. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 3, 2003 09:07 PM
The media is just mad because the story held. And because the trip worked. And because Bush is an effective President.
But mostly because the story held. Imagine the rush of being the reporter who made Air Force One turn around in mid-mission. Pathetic.
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 3, 2003 09:30 PMAs Peter Jennings would (well, should) have put it: Tonight the Media has just thrown a temper tamtrum.
What undiluted arrogance. And the transparency of the bile is startling. The accusations begin with the somewhat understandable -- we were misled issue. But they must all end with the bottom line: this was all a "partisan" event. A partisan event!
Posted by: MG at December 3, 2003 09:37 PMThere's no news justification for the mob following the president everywhere, anyway. An AP guy can keep up with whether he's playing golf or whatever.
When was the last time a member of the presidential leeches reported a meaningful story?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 3, 2003 10:24 PMTwo years and three months after 9/11 and i'm still hearing and reading people say that the media is going too easy on Bush or that the media is too easy on the government. At what point would people like the Brazilian reporter be satisfied?
Posted by: andy at December 3, 2003 10:38 PMI think the answer to Andy's question is that the media will NEVER be satisfied - even if they succeeded in providing the Fedayeen with the exact coordinates of Air Force One so that the president could be shot out of the sky, they would still find someone else to blame. I really have had it with the media, especially the slime at NPR.
Posted by: Melissa at December 3, 2003 11:37 PMRead Mike Allen's 12/4 turkey article, page A33. They're really getting pathetic and petty.
I emailed Allen and the omnibudsman.
Posted by: Sandy P. at December 4, 2003 12:32 AMI was in Waco this past weekend visiting family, and my aunt said she noticed the sound of a jet taking off at an unusual time of the night (especially for Waco, since major jet flights all go out of D-FW or Austin). Assuming the media covering Bush were not sleeping in their rental cars or staying on the front steps of the Post Office in Crawford and were back in Waco where all the area motels are, they should have been able to hear the jet noise too, and might have even been able to tell it was coming from the TSTI-Connally airfield (which does not handle commerical air flights), which is at best 2-4 miles away from the majority the Waco motel sites.
If they had really been alert, then they could have gone out there and discovered that the big metal bird had flown the coop, which wouldn't neccessarily have meant the president was on board, but they could have phoned the White House aides in Crawford or D.C. and asked what was up with Air Force One leaving Waco while the president was still in Crawford.
Posted by: John at December 4, 2003 01:18 AMBy the way, the media does not lie, nor does it withold facts regardless of how inconvenient they are to their pet story. Except when reporting from a manaical dictators' country, or when they color the news to withold race from the description of a loose criminal, or when...
Posted by: MG at December 4, 2003 07:21 AMOh, the idiocy ....
Really, how stupid can these media types be? "Not a matter of national security"?! If the President's plane had been shot down, would it then become a matter of national security?
This is a category mistake. The press thinks that it is part of the government, and that they're not knowing where the president is is the same thing as the government not knowing.
They are, in other words, nuts.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 4, 2003 07:43 AMThe problem is that it's Bush who's supposed to be clueless, not the media.
The phenomenon of an utterly antagonistic press has been a problem since the end of the LBJ administration (though Lincoln had to deal with it as well, among others to some extent). The question is, if you're going to behave like the President's enemy, why shouldn't he treat you in kind? Of course they can cite Freedom of the Press as justification for vile commentary and ceaseless calumny (facts be damned). One of America's basic rights--and glories--it seems: the press can lie (though many other countries can be proud of this as well, to be sure).
Still, the president did throw America's yapping dogs a drumstick by posing with the bird; and they got to call him on it, as well as claim that "Bush lied" about the trip--or at least told less than "the whole truth."
Fair's fair. Something for everybody, and everyone should be, if not happy, content.
Meanwhile our guys are dying, even while events in Iraq do seem to be more hopeful, but that's apparently a side issue.
Posted by: Barry Meislin at December 4, 2003 08:05 AMIt's stuff like this that shows that the Al Franken Radio Network is going to be a failure. Because he won't be competing with ~right-wing talk radio~ for listeners, but with NPR.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 4, 2003 09:32 AMJeff,
For them it would have been a great media event. If they only could have made it happen. The #%&*%$$#@s.
Posted by: genecis at December 4, 2003 10:02 AMIt is indicative of how clueless NPR & the liberal media is to military and security matters that they claim the trip served no national security purpose. Oh really? Do they not think that troop morale has any effect on military effectiveness? Any study of military history would show that in most cases it is morale that is the deciding factor in war.
Posted by: Robert D at December 4, 2003 05:26 PMBy the way, NPR apparently thinks that the White House just started fooling them last Thursday.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 5, 2003 07:55 AM