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Friday, April 18, 2003
Dump the press corps 2We don't always go in for it, but this really is moral equivalence: CNN's filthy, tyrant-appeasing behavior in Baghdad is no different from the sucking-up that goes on in Washington for access to "press conferences" like the one Bush gave just before the invasion. On this theme Michael Wolff has two hilarious Guardian columns, one about CentCom's "press centre" in Doha, Qatar — possibly the worst place in the world to gather news about the war — and another about a question he asked on international TV that earned him 3000 hate e-mails from Rush Limbaugh's listeners. Both pieces detail journalistic ass-licking for (pretty much nonexistent) access to powerful men, and Wolff ends with the point that daily briefings in Doha are just slick shows put on by Central Command. CNN's bargain was more of the same: Its reporting from Baghdad was basically Saddam-approved propaganda, broadcast to American audiences in exchange for keeping open a bureau — which, again, was the worst place in the world to report on the Iraqi regime. (Reporting from Jordan was probably better.) These people are smart; they know when they're genuflecting too far, so why do they do it? Wolff rather beautifully boils it down: "I will get my ass fired," a Canadian jouranlist tells him in Doha, "if I don't get myself on TV asking something."
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
12:09 AM
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