outrageous slackers
I hear a lot of complaints about how the Bush administration jumped from illegal wiretapping to uncovering the leak simply to cover its own precarious placement ... The underlying, and more important, problem here is the pacification of the mass media.
In an imitation of the administration, the media launched a campaign against Cheney and the White House following Cheney shooting his hunting buddy because the administration had not told them.
The Bush administration had not called the media to alert them to a faux pas. And this is surprising...why?
Since when is it expected for politicians to alert the media to their wrong-doings? And since when has anyone believed they could expect such an act from an administration that seals presidential archives, restricts Freedom of Information act requests, and hides anything it can (from meeting notes to prisoners) from the public?
The ruckus about Cheney not issuing a press release is either a way for the press to mask the fact that there is no longer any sort of investigative journalism present at the major news corporations or a glaring admission of exactly that.
When the media relies on press releases to uncover the news, is there really anything newsworthy about what is being reported?
My respect goes out to the local reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in Texas who followed a tip to uncover the story. That’s reporting.